I spent $15 on a craft kit to capture stunning psychedelic camera shots at home

Marbling is the ancient practice of dropping colored inks onto thickened water and creating swirling, creative patterns with pins, combs and anything else you want to stir it with. The process has traditionally been used for decorating paper edges and covers in bookbinding.

The Japanese had their version with Suminagashi, meaning ink floating, while the Turkish called it Ebru, or cloud art. You can finish this project by making paper prints from the liquid, or simply stick to photographing it, which is what we’re going to do here. It’s a fun project to do, but tends to get messy quickly, so have wet wipes or a cloth handy. The first thing to do is get yourself a marbling kit, and these can be found in craft shops and online, for as little as $15 / £12, which is what I paid here.

Setting it up

1 Lighting options

It’s better if you have a light source for this project so that it’s more evenly distributed across the surface and also so that you don’t need to have a higher ISO rating. Here I manually set the color temperature of the lights to 5600K.

2 Camera position

The camera needs to be above, shooting down, parallel to the surface of the ink tray so that it’s completely flat to the camera. I used a 24-85mm lens at the 85mm setting to fill the screen. You don’t need a macro lens, just a short telephoto.

3 Configure the settings

If you have a flip-out LCD screen it will make this easier to set up and change the settings. It’s best to do some test shots for the lighting first, then switch to Manual mode. The camera needs to have all the right settings before you start doing the final pattern creation in the tray as the ink dissipates quickly.

4 Get ready to paint

Setting the thickened water up takes a few hours so do it a few hours before you’re ready to start inking and photographing. This kit came with an A5 tray, which is the ideal size to fit under the camera. Have all your inks ready as you’ll need to work fast to capture the results.

5 Tripod is required

It makes sense to use a tripod so that you can take the time to get it perfectly lined up. Also, once marbling you don’t want to be fussing over lining it up each time. Lastly, it helps keep things still. I decided to increase the ISO to 200 so I could go from 1/25 sec to 1/50 to ensure there was no camera shake.

Prepare for marbling

This marbling kit came with three sachets of Carrageenan powder, 12 paints, a variety of tools to create the patterns with, and some hanging ornaments and papers if you wanted to create a physical product out of it. The first step was to pour the Carrageenan powder evenly around the tray and fill it with 400mg of water. Stir it to blend and leave for 4-6 hours for it to become thick enough to support the paint. Personally, after trying this, I’d be tempted to use only half that amount of water and the same amount of powder. To apply the inks, you put drops from 1-2cm onto the surface, wait for it to spread and then create the patterns.

Step by step: Marbling madness

Getting the camera set up first is key to successfully capturing the emerging patterns.

1 Set the lights

I set the key light to 5600K and then set the camera to the same setting using the custom white balance settings. It’s not critical when shooting in Raw but it helps make the editing process quicker afterwards. If you get reflections off the surface you could use a polarizer or shoot later to remove ambient light.

2 Work out the exposure

I did some test shots in Aperture Priority mode at f/8 with zone/eval metering and it was overexposed. I changed this to Highlight Metering which gave the best results. With a basic mix in the ink tray I then switched to Manual mode, increased the ISO to double the shutter speed and used the settings.

3 The settings

So these were the final settings for all the subsequent shots. I used the f/8 aperture to ensure sharpness across the image. The shutter speed was fast enough to avoid any shake, but just to make sure I also used a 2 sec delay. The focussing used a wide area, single shot focus mode which easily worked on the patterned surface.

4 Start marbling

With all the settings worked out you can now work on creating the patterns. There are two ways to do this – use black/brown paints for the background and then bright, light colours for the patterns. Or, do it the other way, use white paint for the background and darker colours for the patterns. You need to work quickly though, as the paint can sink from the surface, depending on the quality of the kit used.