One of my research projects involves impact of liquid droplets on various surfaces, which causes splashes – a photogenic phenomenon dominated by surface tension effects. Many photographers approach this subject from a purely aesthetic point of view, while the inherent motivation for engineers and physicists is analytic. Fluid mechanics of droplets, soap bubbles, smoke, clouds, etc. is fascinating from both the “classic” and “romantic” perspectives, to borrow the terminology from Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values“.
Certainly, having water in some form as part of the image adds some an aspect of interest to the photo. This is a well-known fact in landscape photography, but I recently came across a surface-tension-related subject on a street in Amsterdam – two street performers creating giant soap bubbles using a rope dipped in soap water. Incidentally, I found that I could temporally resolve burst of the bubble using a 10 frames per second burst of my Canon EOS-1D X
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