I was asked how I created the image above of the coffee pour and splash so here I will share the process and behind the scenes. It’s a composite of about 4 or 5 images. First I created the set using an old patio table, brick wall background (nope its not real!), sacking and other elements and took a shot of the coffee in the cup. The milk jug pour and sugar falling are separate shots. After this I dismantled and ‘coffee proofed’ the set, making sure to keep the light, camera and cup in exactly the same positions. I then experimented with dropping different objects in the cup to get different splash effects. The most difficult part was syncing the trigger with dropping the object - too early and you caught the object in mid-air, too late and you missed the splash! I first tried whisky stones but being hard objects I was afraid they would break the delicate glass, so instead I tried grapes which worked pretty well. I used green ones but I think red would probably work just as well ;)
I must have taken hundreds of images before I got some I was happy with. Then the work just involving compositing the chosen splash images onto the original image using masks, then colour grading.
Various splashes including the one of the grape where I completely failed to capture the splash at the right time!