I've seen some lovely photos of submerged flowers with colours dripped over them. I've been meaning to have a go myself for ages so had a quick practice today. I didn't have any pretty flowers so used dead hydrangea from the garden. I learnt a lot of things that I can put into practice when I try for real. My photos this time weren't brilliant so I had a play around with editing effects in Photoshop to try and get a more painterly look.
@granagringa Hi Madeline. The photo is taken by submerging the flower head in a glass jug full of water. I added a drop of red and drop of blue food colouring into the water. I had the camera on a tripod on burst mode and took a lot of shots as the food colouring spread through the water. In videos I've watched they've used a heavier ink or paint and I think it would work better as the food colouring spread out too quickly. I also got a lot of light reflections so I'd control the light better next time. Also I think a flat surface glass tank, rather than a rounded jug, would work better. And a fast shutter speed and deeper dof would help to get a sharper image. To get a sort of painterly look I used the oil filter and then two effects from the filter gallery - watercolour and texturiser - in Photoshop. I converted the image layer into a smart object before adding the filters so that I could adjust them. Happy to give more info if you'd like - not sure how much you already know about PS.
@nickspicsnz This is great, thank you...the real world stuff I totally get; the PS I get a bit....don't know anything about smart objects but I have played with a variety of filters. I'm still really weak on layers and masks and just do a lot of short-cut editing. But this whole process is really cool... Thank you. I'll let you know if I give it a go!