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.)

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Soap bubbles aren’t illusions, but I am fascinated by them, and have a special technique for photographing them, (with a little help from Photoshop).

Here’s a picture of a bubble moon over London:

I’ll return to the subject of bubble pictures. Meanwhile, the most beautiful images of soap films are made by Karl Deckart.  Jason Tozer is another photographer who has recently made some stunning new photos of soap films and planet like segments.