Shooting Challenge: 28 Liquid Shots…Vote For Your Favourite!


What’s the time? It’s Gizmodo Australia Shooting Challenge voting time, and that means last week’s Shooting Challenge is finally ready for your viewing pleasure. There are some amazing photos in this bunch, so start voting for your favourite photographer! They might just win an Olympus micro four-thirds camera!

For five weeks, Gizmodo readers (and the friends they convince to vote for them) are voting one weekly Shooting Challenge finalist through to the prize round to be judged and announced by Gizmodo editors on Friday, August 21.

Note: In the interests of fairness, voting has been restricted to one per user, based on cookie and IP.

Voting still closes at 10am on Tuesday, August 7.

Prizes


The Olympus OM-D EM-5 is designed to make the jump into DSLR easy. With Live View functionality that lets you see exactly what a shot will look like before you take it, coupled with a 5-axis in-body image stabiliser for shooting in low light, and a retro design inspired by the first OM-D from 1972, the EM-5 lets you capture some beautiful shots. More at Olympus.

We’re excited to be able to give another camera away to Gizmodo’s Shooting Challenge faithful.

The kit you’re playing for is valued at $1499, and includes the OM-D EM-5 body and 12-50mm lens, both of which are weatherproof so you can feel confident when Mother Nature turns on you.


Note: Going forward, linking friends from your social networks to the Gizmodo voting page will still be encouraged, however, please don’t use “vote farming” sites including (but not limited to) GetOnlineVotes or link directly to polldaddy.com. The goal is to grow the Giz Shooting Community in the fairest way possible.

Also a reminder to please be respectful and constructive if leaving a comment about any photo.


Last Week’s Most Voted Photo — Camera 2 Finalist 1 Of 4

Last week was all about textures so rich we could feel them through the screen and Kelsey Anna Phillips moves into the final round judged by Gizmodo’s editors. Will she walk away with an Olympus OM-D EM-5 camera too?

The second round of photo entries for the second EM-5 we’re giving away are below. Which do you like best?
[imgclear]


This Week’s Entries

Click on images to zoom into gallery mode, and don’t forget to scroll down to vote.

[block][left]

Matthew Richards

Morning dew on a cool tin roof.
Was putting some thought into what I could shoot for this weeks theme “liquid” this morning when I spotted this. I liked the cool tones of the morning light combined with the industrial look of galvanized steel.
Could have used a “real” camera, but thought for this exercise, will use what I have on hand.
Shot with a Samsung Galaxy Note, standard auto mode, centre weighted metering, auto focus on, but fixed focus in close for shallow DOF. No flash.
Resized to 1600×1200 in photoshop, but no other changes, crops, filters or tweaks – straight off the Samsung as shot.

David King

Canon 600d
ISO 800
f/5.6
1/640 sec
55-250mm lens
She wanted to swim, Honestly!

Trevor van Weeren

Canon 60D, 100mm 2.8, ISO 1600, F 5, Shutter 1/1250.
Late afternoon playing with water , looking for that essence of liquid.

James Chandler

After missing my entry from last week because the exif data wasn’t right I wanted to have a good go this week. In Australia we have something that is almost liquid gold. Just water. we spend millions getting it and waste much of it. I believe I have been able to create a picture to represent the waste created by the poor shadows of taps that can so easily be fixed.

Noah Stammbach

ISO 1600
1/800
f/2
A bit of winter rain, supplemented with some fake rain – water squirted from a bottle. Using in camera black and white mode. Freezing the liquid with high shutter speed makes it look like snow!

Ben Ricketts

I think of liquid as something dynamic and in constant motion. I wanted an image that captures this and creates multiple points of interest for the viewer. Shot against a black backdrop with an umbrella softened strobe off to the side. This made quite a mess in our tiny apartment bathroom but the results are worth it!
58mm
ISO 50
1/200
F6.3

Jonathon Cleaver

I took this photo at my grandparent’s house. I brought my camera with me with the intention of photographing something moist or liquidy. My grandparents’ backyard is an excellent example, its been honed to perfection for growing vegetables and the grass is less grass but more soft moss. What I’ve photographed is their outdoor thermometer. The thermometer itself is contained within a plastic cylinder so as to protect it. Small droplets of water had condensed on the walls of the plastic, gathering because of the warmth from the morning sun after the freezing night’s frost.
I cropped this in Photoshop, adjusted the levels, and gave it a boarder.
Shutter speed: 1/125 sec
F-stop: f/4.0
ISO: 100

Mitch Swan

This is a shot that I had wanted to try for a while and these challenges are great for inspiring me to give it a go.
The shot itself is of a strawberry breaking water into a glass tank with the camera positioned at water level.
The trick is not to use the shutter to freeze the motion but to use an external flash (since it is far quicker and provides ample light). In practice, it takes many tries to get the exact moment you need.
Gear was Canon 600D with 50mm 1.8 prime, Yongnuo YN565EX flash, RF-603 triggers, ISO 400, f8 and 1/80 exposure.

Jas Martin

I still cannot decide what this looks like. Partially it looks like a bird, partially it looks like a flower.
In reality the shot is upside-down looking into a fishtank with bubbles on the surface of the water from a bit of detergent. A drop of blue food dye was dropped into the bubbles to create the shape.
It was taken with a Canon 600d with the kit lens and a flash. Settings were f 11, ISO 200 and 1/125.

Kevin Cheng

Canon EOS 7D, 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 105mm
Tripod, No filters, Remote trigger, ISO 100
A simple idea and execution I wanted to capture the essence of headlights in a rainstorm. The rainstorm was handily provided by a garden hose. I closed up the aperture a little to f/5.6 to get more depth in the shot particularly with the lens at full zoom.

Patrick Wang

Sony NEX-7 with 18-55mm lens. 1/100 f/3.5 ISO 1600.
I used the internal pop up flash. Took the shot in portrait. I pushed the flash back so it would bounce off the wall which also happen to be a corner so the light was relatively even around the back.
We recently had an epidemic in the fish tank. These were the new next generation. Very lively and hard to track. They would swim up to you and near the surface because they were anticipating food! They’ve grown quickly since we’ve kept the water temperature warmer then prevent another epidemic.

Xavier Tan

Got to admit that I nearly forgot about this week’s challenge. Only remembered when I got out of the shower. Just had to grab hold of the closest “liquid” I could land my hands on & fired off a few snaps in my less than ideal non-studio setup.
E-P3 – f/3.2 – 1/15sec – ISO 200 – Pana 20mm f1.7

Stuart Addelsee

Canon 7D – Canon 100mm
f 7.1 | ISO 800 | 1/320s | 100mm
I tried to create something a little surreal this week, I wanted to present an image that upon initial inspection would prompt the question, “What am I looking at?”. This is the interaction of several liquids, with some small assistance from myself. A few PS tweaks and some cropping but thats about it.
Stuart – Flickr

Elenor Bennett

‘Liquid reflection’
One of the amazing properties of liquids is it’s ability to reflect…. caught this duck contemplating jumping in on a brilliant blue skyed sunny day.
But should he swim, or should he fly? Is this liquid or is this sky?
Panasonic DMCTZ3, ISO 200, f/4.7 , 1/400 sec

[/left][right]

Dave Read

In winter there’s only a few minutes available between the time I leave the office and when the sun sinks below the horizon, it pretty much leaves zero time to set up a shot properly while the light is good, and only enough time to fire off a few shots. This one is rushed, unplanned, shoot from the hip almost, but at the same time it has this kind of imperfect beauty about it.

David Johnson

Frozen State
A busy week left me little time for shooting this subject so with a ten minute window chose to be semi- macro with it…..
This was once a liquid in forming what it became eventually so the liquid had flow and the bubbles have some volume now all is frozen never to move again , which is ok it’s a lovely teapot …..
Camera:Canon 600D
Lens: 18-55 mm @ 55mm
Apperture: Av- f: 36
Shutter: Tv – 1/10sec
Iso: 100
Image correction : None -as shot

Nick Karras

Canon 600d
Continuous shooting
f number 4
exposure time 2
iso 3200
EFs macro lens 18-55mm
What may look as simple is actually a complex shot. Done at night with a combination of moonlight, my htc sensation xe’s flashlight and my camera’s flash were used to take this photo of something that looks rather dark and dire which is actuallty a bucket with diluted black paint with purple hues swayed with my foot while holding my phone in one hand and dslr in the other hand. Hope you enjoyed my entry.

Jay Daley

For this weeks challenge I decided to enter a photo I took over the weekend of Sydney Harbour at sunset under the spectacular rain clouds rolling in for the evening.
It’s no surprise this breathtaking harbour is considered one of the awe-inspiring in the world – it’s certainly one ill never grow tired of photographing.
This photo was taken with a Nikon D800 and a 16-35mm lens and was shot at f8, 1/125sec and ISO 200. I also used a soft grad filter to try and bring out the magnificent colours in the converging stormg clouds whilst still keeping the harbour below nicely exposed for.

Richard Turner

cycling to the cape byron lighthouse looking into the sparkling light expectant surfers down in the dark liquid sony DHC HX5

Mark O’Callaghan

A Macro that I taken this morning, where it was still wet from the overnight rain.

David Henderson

I picked up my first DSLR, a Canon 600D, about 3 weeks ago. Still being in camera honeymoon, it travels with me everywhere. I leave the 50mm f/1.8 lens attached most of the time (including this time) with a Hoya polarising filter and hood on. Turned out to be fortuitous, because this afternoon a friend and I accidentally sliced through the outlet hose of a 20,000l rainwater water tank on my property near Greenock in the Barossa Valley, SA while we were doing some fencing.
I took a series of shots of the resulting water jet while he drove back to the shed to get repair gear. The shots are ISO200 with a high speed and flash. This is the cropped (in picasa) JPEG straight from the camera with no photoshopping.
The narrow depth of field shots all looked best to my eye, and most of them were of the point of impact of the water stream with the chaos of spray and bubbles making a facsinating subjects. However, I have chosen one where the autofocus got caught on a clump of water in the stream itself, allowing serendipity to be the ultimate arbiter of my selection. I find myself wishing I had a shorter the exposure time on this image, cest la vie!
I hope you enjoy.
err!
D.

Ross Scanlon

Took this picture of an apple dropping into a bowl of water before I saw the theme of this competition.
It was one of a series of different fruit dropping into a bowl of water sitting on the back of my car in very bright sunlight and using a blue cloth background.
Taken with a SonyA100
50mm macro lens
Shutter prority
F/6.3 …1/2000s… ISO200

Jonathan Ward

Coloured Milk in Water. Shot in a backlit vase. I love the exploding cloud look of this image, especially the contrast between areas of light milkage and dark milkage!
Shot on a Nikon D7000 1/125 f5.3 ISO400 focal length 93mm. Nikkor 18-105mm f3.5-5.6G

Rob Lacina

Title: Ripples
Shot in my bathtub using a flash with a blue filter. I also set the white balance on the camera to tungsten to exaggerate the blue colour.
Post-processing: Rotated to portrait format, cropped, levels & contrast adjustment.
Camera – Canon EOS 550D
Lens – 50mm
Camera Mode – Manual
Exposure Time – 1/250seconds
Aperture Value – f10
ISO – 100
White Balance – Tungsten

Tracy Miller

Who would have thought pouring water into a glass would be difficult but getting the right shutter speed and focus was a bit of a challenge. I shot this with my Canon T3i.
Exposure 1/1600
F-Stop 1.8
ISO 400

Tony Nguyen

H2O(L)
Falling liquid water at 43 degrees celcuis.
Canon Digital IXUS 75
7.1 MEGA PIXELS
ISO: 250
Lens: CANON ZOOM LENS 3x, 5.8-17.4mm 1:2.8-4.9
Shutter speed: DEFAULT
Lighting: KITCHEN LIGHT
Flash: DEFAULT

Numan Khan

THE NATURAL BRIDGE SPRINGBROOK GC AUSTRALIA.
The Natural Bridge is a naturally formed rock arch over Cave Creek, a tributary of the Nerang River. It was formed from a waterfall which undercut a cave beneath the waterfall and dug a pothole on top, until the two joined and the creek flowed through the cave, leaving an arch across the front.
Picture Taken With Nikon D7000 Using 18-105mm, F/16 E 1/10 Sec ISO 320

Tom Uren

I’d been searching for inspiration for this week’s theme when I looked down at my mid-morning coffee. Still a bit liquid by the time I got my camera out… Shot in raw and cropped and developed in Lightroom.
Canon EOS 600D aka T3i with a Canon EF-S 18-135 mm lens. 1/200 s at f/5.6.

[/right][/block]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.