Splash and Pink Rose

Yesterday morning, I shot this with a couple of halogen lights (one on each side of the sink) with the camera set on a tripod. Believe it or not, the two 500w halogen work lights were nearly not enough light for this high speed shot. I think that next time I will experiment with flash. Here is the result of timing a drip from the faucet on my kitchen sink that splashed into a pan filled with dirty dishwater, (thats right, I meant to do the dishes but got sidetracked). Once I captured the image, I converted it to black and white in photoshop, then created a blue gradient image and an amber gradient image and combined all three using the photoshop filter 'multiply'

Next, this morning I was making coffee and looked out the window...yes I got the coffee made first! Then I took a white umbrella (to diffuse the direct sunlight and to reflect my flash), a radio flash unit (fires from a radio signal rather than a flash signal), my 70-200mm 2.8 lense and camera. I put sand bags on the light stand to keep it from blowing over with the umbrella connected. This flower was in the direct sunlight and would have been way over exposed if shot with the direct sunlight, so I placed the umbrella in front of the sun diffusing the light. Then I pointed my flash into the umbrella for light that would enable me to capture a crisp image. The lower the f-stop the blurrier the background and less light in the background. Here is the result after doing some practicing...