Oil Trick

I always wanted to do this water and cooking oil ‘trick’ with a triadic color combination of Red, Blue and Yellow, and finally found the time late yesterday. Oil and water trick? Yes, easy stuff; just get a clear glass pie plate and set atop a glass lamp table or perhaps you have a clear glass coffee table or kitchen table? Then fill the pie plate with really cold water and add a tbsp. sunflower, canola or vegetable then at a distance of about 12 inches below that glass pie plate, lay out some solid colored strips of paper or some crazy colored wrapping paper or even a multicolored scarf and now with your camera and macro lens, focus solely on the ‘oil slicks’ floating in the pie plate in combination with an aperture between F/13-F/18, making a concerted effort to be right on top, directly overhead of the pie plate so your compositions are parallel to the pie plate. Since you are indoors, you will want to use an ISO of at least 800 and a tripod is also essential. As far as WB, this is one of the few times, I will suggest using AUTO and then adjust the WB if necessary in post. Enjoy!