It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to get the camera out so I jumped at the oportunity to take some pictures when Lisa came to me with a request.

Lisa wanted some pictures for our bedroom and she liked some food coloring images I took a couple of years ago. The idea is you get a fish tank, fill it with water put a white screen behind the tank and light that with a couple of speed lights. After positioning the camera in front of the tank you drip a couple of drops of food coloring into the tank and shoot what happens. Pretty easy really. The nice thing is every shot is different, unique.

The trouble is I no longer have the fish tank, I threw it away when we moved house. Lisa really wanted the shots so the other day she went out and came home with a couple of fish tanks, one the same size as the one I threw away (2 foot by 1 foot) and one tiny one (8 inches by 4 inches) used for a single fish. She didn’t know what size tank I needed so bought two.

So today we decided to take the shots and see what we could get. Lisa’s idea was to have three landscape orientated pictures in the room, all printed on canvas. So she got some food coloring and the fun began.

I decided to try the really small tank as after every attempt you need to change the water in the tank (you only get one go each time), and a smaller tank would allow us to move much faster. Fortunately the little tank worked fine.

In the end we had a cool little production line going.  I took the shots then Lisa changed the water.  She then wiped the tank while Abi removed any bubbles on the inside using an old credit card (funny I know but it really worked).  Then Lisa and Abi squeezed the food coloring into the tank and off we went again.

Lisa LOVED the results and decided to have a fourth image that was wider that could go above the bed.

Anyway, after 160 pictures (yes that’s how many times we had to change the water) we ended up with around 10 images we liked and picked four for the bedroom, you can see those below.

If you ever want to try this you should really give this ago, it’s surprisingly easy to do and actually a lot of fun.