magic lens photography: Fascinated by Soap Bubbles

End of January in the North Country... and you know what that means: frigid cold temperatures!

And 2021 did not disappoint in that regard. We had a multi-day cold spell with subzero temperatures outside, so even the inside of our (wind-protected) porch was cold enough for the "frozen soap bubbles experiment" that I wanted to try since I read about it. There are plenty of instructions out there how to make abstract/macro shots with soap bubbles while they are slowly freezing over with interesting ice crystal structures. But I wanted to use a different lighting idea with my color LED tubes below a translucent bowl filled with snow. After some optimizing over the course of three nights I found my style. And very cold fingers in the process as this can take a while.... You see, not every attempt is successful: bubbles don't form, bubbles burst on contact with the snow, bubbles don't form crystals in the right place etc, etc.... And then it's about 30 seconds or until they freeze over. But it was worth all the pain and I am finding more and more gems while processing the results.

For my photos, I used this exposure starting point: Manual mode, Tripod-mounted using cable release, Aperture = f/9 (best compromise for globe sharpness and background blur), Exposure < 1/2 sec (depending on light intensity), ISO = 800 (above that noise becomes noticeable).

Here are some examples from the three nights. The second one has some photoshop snow globe effect added (I could not resist to try this at least once).