Photographer

Zac McDougall

Finalist in

Lower Secondary Category

Written Statement

In studying for a science project I happened upon what is called the ‘fragile-to-strong’ transition of water. A Japanese research team investigating this process had an image of water molecules to demonstrate the theory. This gave me the idea to explore the fragility of water. Water is made up of thousands of individual delicate particles, yet we can’t see them when we look into a solid mass of water, such as a puddle, a glass of water or a pool. The images in this series explore how different light exposure allows us to capture the delicacy of water as it is released, setting free the individual particles.

All photos in this series were taken using a Cannon EOS5D Mark II on a 75-300mm lens. The first image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/1000 with f/4 (85mm); the second image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/1250 with f/4 (85mm); and the third image in this series was taken using a shutterspeed of 1/2000 with f/4 (80mm).