Memories Through The Lens
Soap Bubbles Project
There are some macro subjects you simply can't stop looking at. No matter how many times they’ve been photographed, the charm of a snowflake’s symmetry or the alien detail of an insect’s eye never seems to fade. We are naturally drawn to the way water droplets bend light and the hypnotic, psychedelic colors of soap film.
In this clip, Max Simpson brings that liquid magic to life.
A soap film is an optical marvel. What appears to be a single surface is really two layers of soap sandwiching a microscopic film of water, just a few molecules thick.
Surprisingly, it’s this hidden water layer that paints the spectacular colors we see. Think of the water layer as having two semi-transparent walls, much like a two-way mirror. When light hits the outer wall, some of it reflects, while the rest travels through to hit the inner wall, where it reflects again. Because these two reflective surfaces are less than a micrometer apart, the returning light rays collide and interfere with one another.
This interference shifts the colors we see in real-time, constantly changing as the microscopic thickness of the water layer fluctuates.
Ultimately, when you watch those vibrant colors swirl across a bubble, you are actually seeing real-time fluctuations in the film's thickness transforming white light (depicted as blue rays above) into a dynamic spectacle.
Photographing this phenomenon, however, presents two main challenges. The first is their fleeting nature; even with techniques to extend a bubble's lifespan, you are always racing against the clock.
The second hurdle is lighting. Because bubbles are both translucent and highly reflective, those psychedelic colors only emerge in areas reflecting a strong, concentrated light. Capturing a crisp, vivid shot requires a large, diffused light source that is powerful enough to let you keep your ISO low while stopping down your aperture—an absolute necessity for getting more than just a sliver of the bubble's curve in sharp focus.
A matte black base is used as a platform for the bubbles. It minimizes reflections and accentuates the colors of the bubble.
The final results
The last pictures shows the last stage of a soap bubble’s life. Just before it pops, there is a very short period of time where the bubble is only ‘just’ a skeleton. At first only the top part of the bubble is skeleton-ish, but that area expands towards the bottom. This expanding goes faster and faster. A total skeleton lives only for a few microseconds. After ‘some’ efforts I managed to get it.
