Splash shot

A splash gives a still picture an event. The liquid was moving a moment ago, so the frame reads as a second of time rather than an object on a table.

It also sells the liquid itself. A drink in a sealed can is a metal cylinder. The same drink in the air is cold, wet and the thing you are buying.

Use flash and nothing else. A studio flash at low power burns for a very short time, and a small flash at its lowest setting can burn for about one twenty-thousandth of a second. That burn is the exposure, so the droplets stop wherever the burn caught them.

Light the liquid from behind. A large softbox behind the glass pushes light through it, and a black card just out of frame at each side draws a dark line down the outer edge so the glass has a shape.

Put the camera level with the surface of the liquid, on a plain graduated grey background. Level is what keeps the pour reading as a pour rather than as a view down into a cup.

Keep the ground simple: a shallow pool under the product and one soft shadow. Every droplet in the air needs clean background behind it, so nothing else belongs in the frame.

Use it for drinks, sauces, shampoo, paint, cosmetics, anything poured, and any product that has to look cold or fresh.

Leave it alone for a listing image or a product that is never wet. A splash around a laptop reads as an accident.

Cinema publishes Frozen In Motion and Freeze Frame. Frozen In Motion is the moving-picture version, shot at a high frame rate so the liquid crawls, and a freeze frame stops the footage on one image. A splash shot is a single exposure, and the flash does the stopping.

Food photography covers the whole plate and the whole table. A splash shot is one product and one moving liquid, and everything else in the frame gets removed.

Harold Edgerton built the electronic stroboscope at MIT in the 1930s and photographed a drop of milk landing as a crown, which proved that a short flash and not a fast shutter is what stops a liquid. Advertising took the method straight into the studio, and drinks brands have used the frozen pour since the 1960s. Much of what looks like liquid in printed advertising is not: moulded acrylic splashes, glycerine and water for condensation, and tinted water for beer, because real beer foams and goes flat under the lights.

The droplets streak. That is continuous light with a slow shutter. Say studio flash at low power as the only light, and say every droplet is sharp and still.

The splash comes back as foam or spray. Say separate droplets and a single sheet of liquid, and name foam and mist in the ban list.