Dazzling Droplets: Photos Reveal Mini Worlds

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | February 9, 2012 08:39am ET

Drops of Jupiter

Carefully "posed" water droplets turn flat photographs into spherical worlds.

Photographer Markus Reugels uses high-speed photography to capture these images of falling droplets.

The planet Mars, shrunk to "fit" inside a water droplet.

Venus sparkles in a drop of water.

A political map of Earth becomes a globe in a droplet of water.

The moon gets the water drop treatment in this photograph by Markus Reugels.

Saturn, sans rings, appears in a drop of water.

Neptune in a drop of water.

Another, simpler, photographic technique involves dripping milk or cream into water to create dreamy images like this one.

With precision timing, a drop of water dropped on another drop creates sculpture-like shapes that disappear in an instant.

In one of the most technically challenging series, Reugels shoots a pellet through falling droplets, creating photographs like this one.

Fancy a splash of cream?

Author Bio

Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor: Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science. She covers the world of human and animal behavior, as well as paleontology and other science topics. Stephanie has a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has ducked under a glacier in Switzerland and poked hot lava with a stick in Hawaii. Stephanie hails from East Tennessee, the global center for salamander diversity. Follow Stephanie on Google+.; Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor on

previous | next