Last time we checked in with photographer Tim Tadder, he was making some pretty fishy photos. He has a new project he shared that is very different but also uses water in an ingenious, manipulative way: he’s used water to make wigs. Water Wigs are a series of photos he made that use water balloons as the catalyst for bright, wacky photos.

The series is a straightforward group of photos: water as wigs. Tadder calls it an “exercise in water weirdness” and it certainly manages to marry his high-gloss aesthetic to kooky portraiture. “We found a bunch of awesome bald men and hurled water balloons at their heads, to capture the explosion of water at various intervals,” he says in his statement. “The result is a new head of of water hair! We used a laser and sound trigger to capture the right moments for each subject to create just the head of hair that fit best with the face.”

Beyond the kinetic water, the models and the color in the photos are big wins in making the photos successful. All of these bald men have such personality and incredibly expressive faces. You also have to wonder how difficult it was for some of them to balance balloons on their head or deal with potentially getting soaked balloon after balloon after balloon. The lighting and color of the photos are brilliant too and work on multiple levels: there is the color of the backdrop, the lighting of the man, and–most importantly–the lighting of the water. Using bright, colorful light with the water result in these wigs glowing and reflecting off of these men’s skin. They’re well done.

Tadder is certainly a photographer we are going to have to keep a closer eye on as we (somehow!) let this one slip by us although we’re always trolling Behance and similar websites for rad Southern California artists. For more on Tim’s work, check out his website. You should also keep tabs on his Behance profile as this is where he uploads newer projects to first.

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