Get the beauty Bubbles

by Greg Robinson 

 

I would advise you to go and get some bubble solution to create bubbles because this trick is so amazing you'll want to try it out yourself as soon as you can! 

 

I'm Greg Robinson and you can find many tricks like this one in my course "Photography Magic" and "Photography Magic II". All these tricks are made for you to have fun with a simple camera. No fancy equipment is needed. Just your camera and a lens of course...

 

For this bubble trick, all you need is a bright sunny day or a flash with a softbox, a black cloth or paper for the background and some bubble solution. Here's the kind of image you're going to make. I must warn you, it's pretty amazing stuff!

 

 

 

Sorry to disappoint you but yes, this is just a normal bubble created by blowing through a straw! 

So you're going to want a black background, sunlight or an overhead flash and bubble solution in a small recipient. These bubbles aren't especially huge so if you have a macro lens (a fake or a real one) it'll work perfectly! If you don't, you can still take the pic's but I recommend you use RAW and full resolution as you'll be cropping your image quite a lot! 
 
Here's my setup: 

 

 

 

The camera is on the right and the black cloth is behind the little mug filled with bubble solution. I decided to place this on a cardboard box for two reasons. The first one is to avoid staining anything and getting into even more trouble with my wife. The second reason is height. As you have probably guessed by my tripod's position, I'm pretty low to the ground! 

 

The secret recipe for the perfect bubble mixture is 80% Bubble solution (any will do, you can find it anywhere) and 20% Glycerin (which you can find in pharmacies). The Glycerin renders the solution a little thicker resulting in longer lasting bubbles although personally, I don't really use it.

 

The next step is focusing! Now, you'll be going macro so your depth of field is going to be very shallow. I suggest you pump your aperture up to its maximum, even if that means bringing your ISO up as well. For the first photo, I was at f/25 and 1600 ISO to get 1/80s in shutter speed. This is going to be your shutter speed also as you'll soon find out the colors, shapes and forms in the bubble move pretty fast and you'll want to freeze that movement. 
 
Also, you're going to need a lot of patience. To be honest, I managed to take the first picture you saw after about 40 shots. And I have that every time I try this out. 
So, create your bubble mixture by using 80% simple bubble solution and 20% glycerin. Stir it all up and place it in a small recipient. This recipient will be placed on a box of some sort or if you have a small table, great! Get your macro lens out and set the focus by creating a bubble (placing a straw inside and focusing on that might suffice) and setting your focus on the shapes, forms and colors (or straw). You might want to get some help for that. Someone can blow into the solution while you're focusing. 

 

Once that's all done, use a black cloth or shirt or something in the background (preferably in the shade). Now you're going to want to get your exposure ready. I suggest setting your aperture to its smallest setting (f/16 or more), using 1/80s and playing around with your ISO. If your maximum ISO is 6400, use 3200. If it's 3200 then use 1600! After this, if you do not have enough light, the choice is yours. Do you want the shapes and forms in the bubble to be blurry due to a slow shutter speed or do you want to lose depth of field? Personally, I'd go with the loss of DOF (Depth Of Field).

 

Once all this is ready, just have fun blowing and taking pictures! You can even get several bubbles going: 

 

Here's one I did with the flash:
 
 
If you're going to use the flash, I strongly recommend using a softbox and placing it just on top of the bubbles. I was about 3 inches away on this one! 
 

Also, in regards to the white balance, I suggest you change it using editing software afterwards. It doesn't really matter what you shoot at during the actual shooting. Afterwards, you'll choose whether you want more blues or reds in your composition.

I hope you'll have a lot of fun with this technique and also hope to see you soon

 

 

Until next time, this is Greg Robinson saying "Have fun Shooting!"

 
 

 

  

 

  
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