I’ve always liked the look of frozen water. Oh, I don’t mean ice, and I certainly don’t mean ice sculptures, although sometimes the latter can can produce some pretty clever results – temporarily, at least. I mean liquid water frozen in time by a high speed camera.

Digital cameras are startlingly fast, but I grew up with film cameras prone to blurry pictures if you didn’t have a steady hand. The high end cameras of my youth that could clearly capture a drop of water rebounding from the surface of water were only seen in science magazines. Now photographers like Michael Melgar recreate the water droplet effect as original works of digital art.

Part of the beauty of such frozen water is in the fact that we don’t see these images of nature in real life. Our eyes and brains aren’t fast enough to appreciate any particular nanosecond of an ocean wave’s break, processing how the natural light is beautifully distorted in the water and how the water itself appears to freeze with glass-like hardness into a never-to-be-recreated arabesque form. But Hawaiian photographer Clark Little does it all the time.

Manipulating water is another approach to creating original frozen water images. In 1948, Salvador Dali posed for a Philippe Halsman portrait using suspended furniture, tossed cats, and water thrown from a bucket. Today, photographer Shinichi Maruyama uses similar techniques to create his own amazing frozen water shapes.

Frozen Droplet by Michael Melgar	Hawaiin Wave by Clark Little
Dali Atomicus by Philippe Halsman	Liquid Circle by Shinichi Maruyama

Now I want to see some of this work in 3-D.

Six-Eye Jackson

• Hollywood North Gears Up for TV New Season Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: the next best thing to being there. Even with the currencies of the United States and Canada nearing parity, Vancouver offers so many production plusses that...
• 'Avatar' Deserves Your Money One of the few and repeated criticisms of Peter Jackson's magnificent remake of "King Kong" was about the "long, boring part" in the middle of the movie. That was the...
• Message In a Throttle, Part Two I don't know what gets into the minds of some advertisers. The following two TV commercials are particularly unpleasant to my sensitivities. I don't even know what the product is...

• Fantastic Image Quality for the Price: Sony NEX-5N Review A positive Sony NEX 5N review is easy for this sleek little Sony Camera with Great Image Quality I've had a great week carrying around the that I picked up...
• Media, Society, and Female Body Image Why is it that a majority of the females that are in the media are fit? This hardly represents the reality in society, but of course, this is what society...
• Save Time, Money and Space in Over 80 Ways If you're looking for handy gadgets, tools and various items that can save you time, money or space (or all three!) this list of more than 80 top products is...