All images by Tim Tadder. Used under a Creative Commons License.
With a combination of high speed flash photography, willing good looking bald men and some cool water balloon explosion, Tim Tadder created an interesting visual exploration of close up portraiture work in his latest photo series called Water Wigs.
According to the photo project descriptions, Tim Tadder intended to do something new and totally different while maintaining a simple concept in creating a fun series of images. It was a studio portrait photography with a twist, as water balloons were hurled at and made to explode directly on top of bald men’s heads simulating the effect of water wigs. The precise capture of the moment the water balloons exploded was done via a laser and sound trigger to create just the right look of body of hair fitting the face in the picture. To further emphasize the fun and amusing part of the images, a triad of strong and bold blue, red and yellow colors were added to the head shots.
While the images Tim Tadder photographed look unusually cool and unique, these portrait photographs still abide by the typical rules of what made great portrait photographs work. Tim was working with clean and tight composition of head shots in a simple studio environment: properly setup studio lighting and simple, plain background. The idea of using exploded water balloon as wigs on bald men was both weirdly hilarious and visually stunning for such close up portraits shot at high speed flash with impeccably timed precision. Photography can only get more interesting when more abstract and unusual concepts are explored to challenge the norm, which Tim has done so elegantly in this photo series. However, we cannot help but wonder how many trials it actually took for some of the shots to actually work, and imagine the bald men having to go through exploding balloons all over again just to achieve that perfectly timed shot! Also, it was no easy feat to keep the straight face as a balloon of water exploded right at the top of your head.
To check out more of Tim Tadder’s photography work, you may visit his official website here.