How You Can Try to Reproduce Astonishing Water Drop Anomalies

As I am just a run-of-the-mill type of guy no different from the average fellow, I know of no reason why other people should not be able to produce astonishing water drop photos of the type I show on this blog. Below are instructions for how you can attempt to reproduce astonishing photographic effects that I have shown on this blog here, here, here and here.

1. Go to a table in your home such as a dinner table, and place something on it that you can use as a stable platform on which to place your camera. This platform might be a stack of books or a box about 6 inches in height. Place your camera on this little platform, so that it's about 6 inches above the table top. 
2. Set your camera so that it will make flash photos every time. If the camera has a "burst" mode or "Sports action" setting, use that. Otherwise, use the "Auto" setting or "Macro" setting.
   
3. Just behind that platform on which your camera sits (farther away from you), place a bowl or pan or bin that will be used to catch falling water drops.
   
4. Just behind that, place a black cloth that will be used as a photo backdrop. A black shirt or black sweater works well. The blacker and less reflective the cloth, the better.  Use an upright book or box to prop up the black cloth or shirt so that it reaches a height of about 12 inches  (one third of a meter).
   
5. Get one of those portable water bottles that joggers and atheletes use, the type that has a spout.
   
6. Fill the water bottle with tap water.
   
7. Hold the bottle parallel to the table, and tilt it so that a few drops trickle out of the bottle's spout, into a bowl, pan or bin. As the water drops pour down slowly from the bottle's spout into the bowl or pan, take flash photos of the drops. Don't pour the water too fast. Pour just fast enough so that water drops slowly trickle out of the bottle's spout.
   
8. Adjust the positions so that the front end of the camera is about 5 inches from the stream of falling water drops.
   
9. After taking a set of photos (perhaps a few hundred), transfer the photos to your computer.
   
10. Open up the photos one by one in some editor such as IrfanView, which makes it easy to crop small portions of a larger photo. Use the software to crop particular water drops shown in a photo. You'll have to "zoom in" to see any orbs in the water drops clearly.
    
11. Look for any interesting anomalies in your photos, particularly any that appear to have face-like details inside small orbs, holes, stripes, crescent shapes, or veil-like shapes. If you find something interesting, save that cropped part of the photo.
    

With some luck and persistence, you may find yourself getting startling photos like the ones below (from April 27, 2017):

And if you have the slightest interest in this topic, make sure to check out this page and this page that show 100+ of the most astonishing photos I took while photographing falling water drops, like the one below.

A slightly different technique (which often seems to work better) is to use a cleaned-out plastic spice container rather than a water bottle with a spout. Use masking tape to tape over all of the holes in the top of the container, except for two. The holes should be about a sixth of an inch (about 4 millimeters). Fill the container with water, hold the bottle upside down, and gently shake it. Or tilt the bottle, to produce a stream of water.

Another thing you can try (if your attempt to produce anomalies fails) is to switch to a different camera. My inexpensive old Olympus FE-100  produced water drop photos showing certain types of anomalies such as striped orbs and orb crescents. But for a long time such effects would never appear using my Sony A6000 camera. However that camera would occasionally produce abundantly other types of anomalies such as orbs with holes.   Experimenting with a few digital cameras might increase your chance of success.

If you don't get anything after a few attempts, keep trying. I get the stranger photographic anomalies in only a minority of the times I try to photograph water drops. Probably 70% of my photographic sessions do not produce content I publish on this blog.  Persistence is the number #1 attribute required for success in photography of the mysterious or paranormal.

Now for some comments that involve a good deal of guesswork. I would imagine that you won't have any chance of succeeding at this task if you don't want to succeed at it.  But what if you do want to succeed at this task, but have no success? In that case, your best bet would be to put off further water drop photos until you are able to first get photos of orbs on a regular basis. Try taking sets of 30 or 40 flash photos every day of the week, at any old location around your home. As you are taking these photos, try thinking to yourself along the lines of: I really would like for some orbs to show up in my photos. If you then find you are able to get orbs appearing in your photos, it might make sense to try again taking water drop photos.

Also a word of caution: do not attempt this task unless you are mentally ready to see something mind-boggling in your photos.