I was wondering if you guys could give some guesses on how this shot was done? I spent an hour on having a go at creating something similar, but did not get very close. Below are some of my attempts. I started off with just water drops on glass, then later on moved on to baby oil because it lasted longer. I tried moving the glass at different distances between the model and the camera. When you see the model hold the flash light, was just to help my camera focus, the room I was in was dark. The photos below are in no particular order.



On 2nd thought, I had just initially guess that the reference image was water drops on glass, but I now think maybe it was just water drops in mid air. What do you guys think?

Looks like opposite side lighting, one soft and one hard light. Your attempts looks like you used a big soft light from above. The bubble/waterdrops/dust look like that because they're back lit by the hard light.

OP....Why not ask the Photographer...Allan? He is on MM.

There are several ways to do it but I prefer to use striplights myself.  For the example you showed "perhaps" a grid was used to restrict the light to a more narrow beam. 

The drops and easily be applied after the fact with an overlay if shooting them naturally becomes an issue.



I used something similar in the image below but rather than having one light in front of the subject and the other behind in this image both lights were 45 degrees behind the subject. One on each side and both had a grid attached to create more contrast.

My suspicion is that it's in post because there seems to be depth to the droplets, and motion, so not on a plane of glass. Maybe they shot a few plates on the black background with the models lighting and then "plated" them in. The droplets in front of the body would be a little more challenging in post. But to do this with an actual model you'd have to constantly have someone misting.

I know a photographer who does a similar effect on athletic images. It's pretty sweet and looks more like snow. I'm not sure exactly how he does it but I know for a fact that it isn't live.

Once you are misting the droplets you'd need, as others have said, a harder light source from behind. The light you are trying to use is too soft. You need something like a large reflector with maybe some frost diffusion, definitely not any sort of softbox or heavily diffused light.

Cross lit

Thanks everyone for your input, I very much appreciate it!

a lot of lifting

shot this playing around with my new A6000 and kit lens...maybe if the glass was farther away the drops would be smaller?