June has been a remarkably aqueous month: rain falls, snow melts, creeks rage, rivers rise, and lakes flood. What better way to acknowledge this than with a picture of a single raindrop on the Lake?
The impact of a large raindrop on the Lake creates a momentary pit in the surface—a small temporary crater. Then, the water surrounding this crater responds by rushing back inward. Arriving from all sides, the water collides in the centre and squirts upward to form a tower of water. Surface tension causes such a cylinder of water to break into drops, starting with one at the top.
It is odd, but the response of a lake surface to large drops falling from the sky is to squirt drops back skyward.
Driven by the impact of a large raindrop, a waterdrop-topped tower has arisen from the Lake. The waterdrop forms a lens in which can be seen an upside down image of the distant shore.
what a spectacularly interesting photo!
I read the list in the first sentence as nouns, rain falls, snow melts, until I got to creeks rage and then had to start the sentence again. It’s a very cool photograph. I wouldn’t have noticed the reflection of the shore had you not mentioned it.
The inventor of high speed photography was Harold Edgerton. His high speed photographs forever changed how we see the ‘world of the fast’. Here is an excellent article on him: http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/edgerton.html
Dave, I had always thought that the first to do this sort of thing was Eadweard Muybridge and that Edgerton, who came much later, improved on it.