Creative bubble photography

Creative bubble photography at 5x magnification! – Watch on YouTube

Bubbles are a fun shoot to try at home! They can be messy and unpredictable, but that’s what provides endless hours of fun for macro photographers. In this article, we’re exploring some creative bubble photography at 5x magnification. That’s REALLY close up!

Creative Bubble Photography

Bubbles are an interesting beast when it comes to photography. They come with a lot of challenges that other subjects don’t usually present. They move and change with time, they’re translucent, but also reflect light… and of course they are messy too!

We’re making bubbles using dish soap, water, and a sponge. It couldn’t be more simple to get yourself a new macro subject to play with! Just make sure to have a cloth or two on hand to clean up any splashes.

We placed a handful of bubbles down onto two different surfaces.Two plates from the kitchen, but one is black, and the other white. The different colour of the surface changes the look of the image significantly.

You can see in the image above that the black plate creates a dark background for the bubble, whereas a white plate reflects more light and makes the bubbles look much less contrasty.

Lighting and Colour

One of the easiest ways to get more creative with your bubble photography is by using specialist lighting. Photography is all about light, and bubbles interact with light in unique ways! We’re using the Adaptalux Studio to add some colour and lighting to our creative bubble photography.

Different colours of light mix, and every light source creates a new specular highlight in every bubble. You can create bokeh in the out of focus areas of the image and reflections in the large bubbles!

Diffused lighting provides a softer look, and direct light sources make tiny bight spots. The one thing you do need, is fine control over where the light is placed. Moving light around is key to finding pleasing angles and interactions with the unpredictable bubbles.

Focus and Depth

A bunch of bubbles together like this is quite a deep subject. Meaning, there is not a single plane to focus on. Either you shoot at an angle and have the focus drop off in the foreground and background, or you shoot from above and have multiple layers of bubbles.

Both can be great ways to shoot, and choosing where to focus is very fun! Try focusing on the reflections of bubbles within bubbles. Or better yet, look through the top bubble into deeper ones!

Bubbles can look like little windows, distorting and focusing light around them. If you need bigger bubbles, just wait a while! Bubbles are always changing and generally pop or join together to create larger bubbles over time.

You may be tempted to try focus stacking to get as much depth of field possible, but we found that it’s generally not a great idea with bubbles. They move a little too much over the course of your focus stack, and software like helicon focus has a hard time with all the highlights and transparency.

We will leave you to decide which style you like best, but we think a bit of soft focus suits this kind of abstract subject.

Abstract and creative bubble photography is all about experimenting and exploring. The bubbles change all of the time while the composition and lighting angles are endless! Together this provides a fun subject to pass the time and create some interesting images at home!

So if you’re looking for a quick and easy subject to test out your new macro lens, we recommend bubbles! Check out more bubble photography we have tried over the years on our blog.

Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more macro photography tutorials, ideas and inspiration!