Markus Reugels, a German photographer creates wonderful photographs of carefully selected backgrounds encapsulated in water drops.

The technique, while sound simple, is actually quite complex. It needs to control the shape of the drop, the background and the lighting to catch a perfect “refraction”. Of course, the whole thing needs to be repeatable so Markus can adjust the final image. (This is not surprising from someone who can shoot two drops collide with a speeding pellet)

And if that was not enough, to take an image like that you need to focus twice: you need to focus the drop “lens” on the background and then you need to focus the “Real” lens on the drop.

The results are amazing.

“The Hardest thing is to set the Focus on the right point.

The light is very important for a good Results. When you fire the flashes without any Diffuser, you will get some very hard light reflex in the drops. These will destroy the Picture. The goal is , to bring depth with the light into the drop.#

Here is the setup in case you were wondering how those were made:

The entire series can be found under Markus’s Refractions set on flickr.

[via twistedsifter]