To bubbly go…

Turn soap bubbles into distant planets! James Paterson shows how to capture the otherworldly display of colours and textures

- James Paterson

When seen close up, soap bubbles are a sight to behold. Vivid colours swirl across the surface in a slow, elegant dance that has to be seen to be believed. The play of colours and textures make them look almost like planets. As such, a bubble makes for a wonderful subject for a vibrant abstract photography project. What’s more, you’ll probably have everything you need for this around the house.

We can make our bubbles using a straw and a homemade bubble mixture. With a little care, it’s possible to blow up the bubble and let it dangle from the end of the straw to form a glowing orb of colour. The lighting is key… We need a flash to freeze the motion of the swirls and pick out the fine details. The biggest challenge is that bubbles reflect their surroundings, so any distracting objects or lights will ruin the shot.

To get around this, we can use a couple of sheets of plain white paper to form a cylindrical light tent for our shot. When we point a Speedlight at the paper tube the light will diffuse and spread along the whole length, resulting in 360 degrees of even illumination. The only area we can’t properly illuminate is the opening in the tube for our lens, which results in a black hole at the centre of our bubble planet.

You can be set up and ready to go in short order but be warned, once you start shooting you might end up spending the rest of the day blowing bubbles – it’s very addictive!

The set-up: bubble planets

GET YOUR CAMERA AND LIGHTING SET UP TO CAPTURE COLOURFUL SOAP BUBBLES UP CLOSE

1 Still camera