How to Photograph Soap Bubbles

Photography Tips

Having to stay indoors shouldn’t necessarily mean that you can’t get creative with your photography. Contrarily, it’s an opportunity to enhance your creativity by using everyday objects that we otherwise take for granted. Take soap bubbles for example. If you’ve ever paid close attention to them, you’ve noticed the interesting & colorful patterns they form on their surface. Photographer Mike Smith takes you through the process of taking some spectacular photos of soap bubbles:

Smith demonstrates in this video how you can use items that are easily available at your home to create some interesting bubbles. All you’ll need is water, liquid detergent, and some glycerin.

As for the equipment, a macro lens works best in this instance. But if you don’t have one, you can either use an extension tube or just any lens that you have. If you have multiple lenses, use the one with the shortest minimum focusing distance. It’s important that you get close to the bubbles. To light the soap bubble, you can use a flash with a diffuser. If you don’t have a flash, Smith demonstrates toward the end of the video how sunlight works just fine.

For your settings, feel free to play around. But, make sure that you have a good depth of field to have most of the bubble in focus. It shouldn’t be a problem if you need to use a slower shutter speed as long as you have the camera mounted on a tripod. And when taking the photos, make sure to gently blow on the bubble. It increases the swirls and introduces a better range of colors. This really adds a lot of interest to the image.