Here’s another picture to add to our category of soap bubble imagery. For details about how I photograph the bubbles, see entries in the soap bubble category.
I hadn’t noticed before that there are some great movies of bubbles on Youtube, such as this model of Jupiter’s turbulence, or this movie of a bubble bursting. There are some really astonishing still photos of bursting bubbles in this report from the Mail Online site. They’re by Richard Heeks, who’s currently studying for a literature PhD at Exeter University in the UK.
I was fascinated to see those, because back in October 2008 I posted an image of a bursting bubble as a visual metaphor for the financial crisis then at its height. But not having Richard Heeks’s stunning skill and patience as a photographer, I faked up (pretty obviously I hope) a graphic of a bubble burst in Photoshop. Not remotely like the real thing, as it turns out.
Here’s a new item for our category of soap bubble pictures. The movie shows a science-centre-style demo, not of a bubble, but of a soap sheet. It’s a way of showing patterns like the ones that appear on bubbles, but streaming down a huge sheet. The quality of the movie is not great, so here’s a still photo that shows the effect.
I think this was originally a Victorian demonstration, but I don’t have chapter and verse for that. It’s a demo you sometimes see in hands-on Science Centres, but often it’s not set up so that you can really see the colours. For that there has to be a black background to the sheet, and a translucent screen, at an angle of forty five degrees to the sheet, brightly illuminating it.
I’m fascinated by patterns like these. Just setting patterns in motion, as in many screen savers, doesn’t seem to me to produce effects that are as beautiful. I don’t think it’s just the colours. If we could characterise what makes these patterns special, might we then open up a whole new world of visual expression, using computer animation? Or would we just end up with a small repertoire of pretty effects?
Fancy trying to set up your own soap sheet? It’s not so hard.
Here’s an image of a dawn bubble to celebrate the arrival of autumn, and to add to our category of soap bubble images. Or if you’d like to make your own soap bubble pictures, you can go straight to how I made mine.
I love soap bubbles, so following our earlier series of pictures that are not illusions but soap bubble fantasies, here’s an incident involving the statues on the Pont Alexandre III in Paris (at least I think it’s that bridge ….). If you want to view some more bubble pictures, there’s a whole category of soap bubble pictures, and it includes one post on how I (and others) take photos of soap bubbles and films.
Here’s a picture to announce a summer posting pause. We’re working hard on brilliant new features, for a relaunch in a few weeks. But meanwhile explore the archive – there’s stacks on the site now, and it’s almost all new stuff, not the versions you see on lots of illusion sites. Try putting the name of any illusion that interests you into the search box at the bottom of the lists to the right. Or explore popular categories, like Impossible Worlds. And don’t forget (if you’ve been here before) that there are now nearly a hundred brilliant mini illusions for you to download for your own sites.
This picture is a Photoshop fantasy rather an illusion, but it’s here because I like bubbles. I think the creature is a gecko, (please comment if I got that wrong). The background and sky is from the Nile in Egypt, but I snapped the gecko in the London Zoo. There’s an earlier post on how I photograph the bubbles. For all the bubble picture posts (and some nice ice) see the category Soap Bubble Pictures.
Like my other soap bubble pictures, this one is fantasy rather than illusion, and the only miracle going on is thanks to Photoshop. The wind turbine is in Cornwall, as far as you can go in the pointy bottom left hand corner of England without falling off the end. The bubbles start out as real ones, and see my earlier post for how I photograph those. (Also for how other photographers have done it). For more of my bubble pictures, click on soap bubble pictures in the categories list to the right.
There is a perceptual point to this bubble picture though. When you look at it, do you find that you can almost imagine what it would feel like to be the wind turbine, making this serpentine gesture? A bit as if you were about to whack a football into a goal with your head, maybe? That wouldn’t be such a surprise if this was a picture of a human being. One of the most interesting discoveries of recent years has been of “mirror neurones” in the brains of primates. These are brain circuits, associated with real movements or gestures, but which fire off without consequent movement when we merely observe someone else making a gesture. But it’s curious that we can have the same kind of experience when we see a picture of a wind turbine, merely behaving like a person.
This isn’t an illusion, more a special effect, but I just like bubble pictures. The question mark soap bubble started out as two photos of real bubbles. In a later post I’ll go into my the ways I use Photoshop to distort and adapt the bubble images. For how I take the bubble photos, and who else is doing it, see my earlier posts on bubble pictures, by just clicking on Soap Bubble Pictures in Categories, to the right.
Following on from my last post, about taking bubble pictures, here’s another. I made it a while ago for my selling site, with environmental issues in mind, but this weekend it seems, well, topical.
Here’s a picture to introduce a post about how I take photos of soap bubbles. OK, I admit I didn’t snap this one out of an aeroplane window. I also admit that Photoshop had something to do with it, and I’ll get to that in later Photoshop posts. But the bubbles start out as real bubble photos, and if you wonder how, read on below. (If you’d just like some bubble pictures for your own site, there are two you can link to on our page of link thumbnails, and I’ll be adding many more later. There’s an earlier post too, with another bubble picture. Or if you need easy presents for someone, why not browse some fun bubble image and illusion stuff to buy.)
