How to be a water balloon photography internet sensation

Award-winning Californian photographer Tim Tadder has become an internet sensation with his eye-catching exploding water balloon style wig photography.

It took Tim more than a decade to master his signature “Super Badass” photographic style, but all the work paid off now that his water balloon photography has become a huge hit.

“This concept was born ten months ago. Surfing the internet, I saw someone had shot pictures of water balloons exploding, and thought ‘this is cool, I’d like to do something with this’,” said Tim. “I do make an effort to shoot stuff for me, shoot my own concepts, and Water Wigs was born by a desire to shoot something completely different, something out of my normal sphere, something to experiment and tinker and play and just concentrate on the image.”

If you feel inspired by Tim’s watery hair pieces then here are our bite size tips on how to go about capturing your own watery action.

1. Tripods:
You’ll need to keep a steady shot so ensure you have a reliable tripod ready to capture the action.

2. Fast shutter speeds are key:
Pre-focus your camera on the balloon and set your shutter speed to at least 1/1000 as timing is crucial to ensure you get the perfect shot.

3. Depth-of-field:
You will need a shallow depth-of-field to blur the background, bringing focus to the balloon. An F-stop of 5.6 should do the trick.

4. Avoid the flash:
Lastly, try to avoid using the flash as it’s easy to get glare from the water. Outdoor conditions can work well for lighting or studio reflectors can also create great lighting effects. After that, it’s all a matter of anticipating the moment, but continuous shooting means that the perfect shot will be in there somewhere!

Interesting fact:
Tim bought a sound trigger from the internet that fired the camera’s shutter when it picked up a high frequency sound. Before he began shooting Tim and an intern conducted extensive experiments with a mannequin in his studio to produce the final impressive effect.

To see more of Tim’s amazing watery wig collection click here.

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