In this shot, I wanted to combine the ring used in the pigment shot with a vortex of water spinning down through the ring. The first trick was to determine how to create the vortex.

We started by placing a large 4L beaker on a magnetic mixer, and played with different sized stir sticks to get the right effect with the vortex – we needed to use the larger sticks given the volume of water.

But the biggest problem was trying to light a circular beaker that is made of normal glass i.e., not sand-blasted glass like our custom tanks. On a whim, I thought we could try the magnetic mixer under the tank we used to create the splashing pearls, thinking it might be powerful enough to move that volume of water.

And it worked!

We were able to get the vortex dancing about in the tank, creating all kinds of shapes for us. So we started working on lighting, and came up with the following setup:

The magnetic mixer was placed under the tank in the middle, supporting the weight of the tank. We placed a silver card on the mixer so the top of the plate wouldn’t reflect up into the vortex formed above it.

To provide the background, we aimed a broncolor pulso-spot 4 at a scrim with some tough-spun attached to it hanging just behind the back of the tank. The pulso-spot 4 created a round light on the scrim, which was diffused even more by the tough-spun, resulting in a nice soft round light with gentle fall-off, without eminating light into the tank itself.

We took a number of shots of the vortex while it formed in the tank until we had a number of great shots to use in the final composite. The tank was then removed, and the ring was shot in the existing lighting setup to use in the final composite. Using the ring shot from the pigment setup would not have worked – a different focal length lens was used in this setup (120mm) and slightly different lighting setup. The differences would have been enough to make the ring look as though it didn’t belong.

Here’s the final shot after compositing: