Editorial Portraits with Water Droplets

inspiration, shooting

December 13, 2023

Photography & Styling – Marina Williams

Model – Timothy Young

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to do a photo shoot of a model through a layer of water. I’ve considered many different ways to do this, but I thought that getting a clear acrylic tray and filling it with water would be the easiest.

I got the tray on Amazon and also bought a spray mister so I could also spray water droplets on it too. To set up my shot, I got two long pieces of wood planks and set them on top of two sawhorses in my studio. This way, I’d have more room in the shot and the legs of the sawhorses wouldn’t be visible.

I had the model Timothy get underneath the tray while I stood on a stepstool from above, with an LED light as my key light angled down toward his face. I used a smaller blue LED as the fill light coming in from the opposite side.

While shooting, I realized it would have been helpful to have an extra pair of hands to help create ripples in the water, but Timothy and I tried our best to make it work ourselves. We played around with him reaching up towards the tray filled with water, and later switched to shots of him holding the tray in front of his face while I sprayed water droplets and mist on it. We also did a couple of shots with him wrapping my roll of mylar paper around himself for some fun reflections.

To wrap up our shoot, we switched spots so I was underneath the tray and he was above me. We filled it with water again and did a few with him sticking his face in the water and blowing bubbles, which produced one of my favorite shots – I ended up liking it more in black and white.

Overall, this was such a simple concept that led to some really creative and beautiful portraits. I’d definitely recommend trying this out at your next shoot!