Frozen Soap Bubble

Yesterday’s attempt at getting some frozen bubble shots was pretty successful and I learned a few new things.

One of the bigger things is that I really need to be wearing my reading glasses when I’m taking photos anymore. I struggle more and more often to see if I’m actually in focus or I have to rely on the autofocus, which doesn’t always give me what I want. This is especially true if I’m using my viewing screen to frame my shot. Wearing glasses is still a long way from perfect or even from where I used to be, but it gets me a whole lot closer than I’ve been getting lately.

When it comes to doing the bubble photos, I’ve also learned that the angle you take these from is critically important and I don’t always get that right. One is the fact that you have to have the light hit it in a way to bring contrast to those crystal structures or you just don’t see them well.

The other issue on angle is the fact that these are transparent and as they freeze, you will get the crystal structures on the back overlapping with the ones on the front, which can make the whole thing look blurry. Many of the ones I tried to take yesterday didn’t look that great once they were fully frozen, but the partially frozen ones looked great. So you have to be at an angle to get the crystal structures to pop, but mainly the ones only on the front side of the bubble, which can be really tricky.

I also learned that I pulled off some of my best images from the videos I tried, but those files aren’t nearly as good a quality as a normal photo, so that is a good and a bad thing.

There are several really good ones I want to share over the next couple of days, but this one is probably one of my favorites (though I do have a few that come close for different reasons). This one is up there because it is one of the best at really showcasing those crystal patterns as they begin to form.

In some ways, I wish we had more days where I could practice, but… nope! It has to be way too cold to play, so I think I’ll be good with the once or twice a year opportunities.