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In this case study,
we're going to see

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how we can create a photo
illustration of your work.

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The idea here is to show
how a liquid battery works

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for a final illustration.

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So first, create
photographic bits and pieces

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and put them all together.

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Think of it just as if you
were drawing the pieces

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and putting those
sketches together.

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After I met with the researchers
for a brainstorming meeting,

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I got all this
material from them,

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including a diagram
that described my idea

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to create a model of how
a liquid battery works.

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This is the way I
imagined the shoot to go.

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OK first, I would take an
optical quality cuvette

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and would then pour the
mercury and the water

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into the cuvette and
somehow suspending

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with a clamp, a strip
of metal foam, which

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is an important
part of the science.

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And because I was imagining a
full container of this material

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after making the
image, I would then

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crop out the right
side-- we don't

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need to see the
clamping device--

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and then flip the left
side, or a small portion

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of the left side,
over to the right,

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to then make the full
container and the final model.

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Now remember, this is
not a documentary image.

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This is a photo
illustration for, hopefully,

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a cover submission.

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That's the idea.

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OK, so first I start looking
at the cuvette, the vessel

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into which I was going to
be inserting and pouring

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all the components.

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I put it on a light box
and liked what I saw.

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The picture was going to be
simple and lit fairly well.

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Then I practiced
inserting the metal foam

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with a clamping apparatus,
to see if it was doable.

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And it was, at least
with an empty container.

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Sort of a dry run, so to speak.

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So the next
photograph I took was

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with the mercury and water
in the container, which

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looked fine too.

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I then discarded
that, by the way,

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into the special container
the researchers provided,

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and sort of started
all over again

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and tried for the
next steps, which

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was going to be inserting
the foam at a certain level

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with the water.

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I played a little with lighting,
by shining a tungsten lamp

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onto it.

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It gave a warmer
feel, which I liked.

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Then I plopped it
further into the water,

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to see how that
was going to look.

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And again, I changed
the lighting,

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by adding a little lamplight
onto this material.

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So I was getting there.

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Eventually, this is the
image that I wound up with.

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Well, sort of wound up with.

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And I'll tell you, frankly,
I was a bit nervous

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dealing with the mercury and
pouring it out and dealing

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with that and the
water, especially

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while having the important
cautionary instructions always

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sitting in front of me.

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So again, making the pieces
photographically and then

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putting them together
was the way to go.

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Remember, this is an
illustration using photographs,

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for the purpose of creating a
model of the technique of how

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a liquid battery works.

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And this is how I did it.

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I'm using Photoshop
here, but you can

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use other software, of course.

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Take a look at
the real life part

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of this, where we're using
one image for the receiver

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of the piece on the
right side, which is

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what we had been talking about.

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So I'm first going to
select the right side,

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copy and paste into the
image on the left side--

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the container with
all the material.

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Move it around a little
bit, see if it has

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the potential of being doable.

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It's not bad.

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I think when it's flattened,
it will look better.

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I think it can work, so I will
in fact flatten the image.

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And if you remember,
we were going

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to crop out the
right side, which

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is what we're going to do here,
crop, make the image as full

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as we can without the
right side cropping it out.

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OK, that looks pretty OK.

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And now, as we had previously
talked about in the animation,

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we're going to flip
one side to another.

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But first, in order to do that,
I'm going to expand the canvas,

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to make room for the
new piece that we're

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going to start working with.

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So I am, in fact, taking a
piece of the left side, which

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is what we talked about.

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I'm copy and pasting,
there it is again.

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And we're going to flip it to
make up for the empty side.

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We'll just flip it horizontally.

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Move it around a bit, and
with a little fudging,

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we get a pretty nice start for
an image that we're getting to.

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I decided to play more about
raising it one more level.

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And so I went back
to what we have

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seen before in another
image, where I basically

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take this pretty good image,
select the background,

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invert the selection so that
we have, in fact, selected

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the liquid battery.

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Copy and paste,
and you see here,

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we have another layer of
just the liquid battery.

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And went to Layer
style and went back

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to our old Drop Shadow friend.

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And I played with making a
drop shadow, which I did like.

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I tend to think that
it just pushes it away.

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And I think it
worked quite well.

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Eventually, what I
did wind up doing

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is playing a little bit with
putting a different background,

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for example, making a gradient.

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That wasn't going to work.

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I didn't even know
what I had in mind,

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but I really wanted something
a little more dramatic.

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So going back to the
picture without the color

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in the background, I'm
keeping the drop shadow.

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I went to Adjustments
and decided

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to invert the whole picture.

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And yes, that's quite an unusual
image, but decided to do it

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and play a little
bit with the hue,

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to get that blue back to the
orange that I sort of liked.

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It wasn't quite enough.

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I increased the
saturation a little bit.

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And there it is.

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This was the final image that
I showed to the researcher.

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And frankly, I think we
got ourselves a winner.

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Unfortunately, not the
cover of the journal,

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which I really-- we were
hoping that would happen.

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But it did get the home
page of the journal,

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and a couple of other home
pages of various journals.

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And it got a lot of attention.

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First of all, of course,
the science was important.

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But we pretty much agree
that making an image

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to draw attention to
the science really

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is what this image
making is about.

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I hope you enjoy this, and see
the thinking that is extensive

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when you get into
something this complicated.