Being trapped inside an increasingly shrinking RV during a polar assault can do strange things to a person’s mind. I am stir crazy after fighting the elements for five days. Suddenly the idea of making frozen bubbles begins to appeal to me. That is how I find my myself outside post dawn on Monday trying to encourage soap bubbles to land on the snow. My hope is that they will freeze after landing so I can take a picture of the frozen orbs.
Because it must be about 17F to produce frozen bubbles, it is unlikely that I will ever have the chance to do this again (I sincerely hope!). But the process is not complicated if you want to torture yourself and try it. Find a calm (no wind), freezing place with good light to set up. You can make your own soap bubble brew (lots of recipes on the web). If you use cheap bubble mix like I did, it helps to add extra glycerin to the brew to boost up the bubbles resistance to popping.
You also need an assistant bubble blower. Storm, attempting to introduce a modicum of common sense into my endeavor, refuses to participate. Instead of an assistant, I am forced to rely on my tripod. I set up the camera and focus it on my proposed bubble landing zone. Bubbles are uncooperative subjects. They will burst before you can pick up a camera and focus on them. To avoid fumbling if a sphere manages to alight safely, I hook up my remote shutter release too. After hundreds of failed attempts to focus on an intact bubble, I am able to produce these three photos.
Frozen Bubble Pictures
WOW, that is taking picture taking to a totally different lever, good job, probably be able to sell those. We have joined in on the frozen pip blues. I have a heater inside the RV and one in the basement, but I failed to put my drop cord light in the bay where the water input is. I have no idea what is busted, (will check that when it warms up and is fairly dry outside) when I turn on the water pump water runs out of the input line. Not good. But can’t be too hard to fix when it warms up. Hope you have all your water problems solved, I am sure we will have another snow but hopefully not as hard as you all did a week or so ago. We havin fun yet. :)))) GOD BLESS
JD
Jim
I love these! But they make me shiver just thinking about you going out there in the cold to get these shots.
Thanks! They are definitely not something I would go out of my way to do again 🙂
” Storm, attempting to introduce a modicum of common sense into my endeavor, refuses to participate.”
I’m with Storm on this one but I’m glad you were successful. Before I read your revelation on how you made the shoreline bubble picture I was marveling on how you managed to capture that reflection.
If you get so bored that you start thinking of making another attempt at something like this give us a call and we’ll meet for lunch to give you something to do 😉
Somehow I figured most people would side with Storm on this one 🙂 Thanks for the lunch offer – considering the frigid forecast for next week, you may be hearing from me sooner than you hoped!