Soap bubbles are beautiful as they soar in their lightness. But if you want to capture them on a photo yourself, you often face the problem of not being able to capture them in all their beauty. But there are a few tricks you can use to do this anyway.
What you need:
- soap bubbles
- camera
- black fabric
- black cardboard
- assistant
- Photoshop
Photographing soap bubbles – but where?
- Since soap bubbles have an incredibly fragile structure, it is not easy to keep them in one place and to find a suitable background that puts these shimmering bubbles in the foreground.
- Photographing soap bubbles in the wild is therefore an extremely tedious undertaking if it is only about the soap bubbles. Because here the wind blows them away quickly and the natural background easily distracts from the soap bubbles on a picture.
- So if you are only concerned with the soap bubbles in your photo, it is advisable to look for an enclosed space for them. Ask a friend if he/she can assist you with this. Because blowing and taking pictures at the same time is really difficult.
Preparation and correct processing of the photos
- Once you’ve found a space, cover one wall with black fabric or black cardboard. It can also be another dark color. Light colors don’t work very well, as the soap bubbles in front of them don’t contrast and look a little too translucent. If you don’t have enough fabric or cardboard for an entire wall, covering a chair or stool with the fabric will do. It is only important that you have a vertical and a horizontal surface.
- Place lamps in front of your black fabric/cardboard and illuminate the space well. Lamps that have a light focus and shine on a specific spot are best suited. The black fabric should not be illuminated, but the point of light should be placed in front of it. For example, take 2 desk lamps and place them across from each other so that the two lamps face each other.
- Now aim your camera. Make sure your camera settings are correct. Adjusting the sharpness is a bit tricky. The soap bubbles move so fast that you can’t readjust the sharpness for each one. It is better to choose a point that you focus on and where you can set the sharpness yourself. If a bubble crosses this spot, all you have to do is pull the trigger.
- This is where your assistant comes into play. Position him/her so that he/she can blow right into your camera focus. And now it’s time to try it. Don’t be discouraged if the first shots don’t come up. Just start taking pictures !
Photo editing for an even better photo
- Now when you have some photos that you like, drag your images to your computer. Open your image editing program, e.g. B. Photoshop and insert your photos.
- Crop the photo first. This allows you to cut out exactly the part that turned out best. To do this, go to “Crop” and then to “Image format”. Set the desired size here.
- Now you can make the tonal correction. To do this, go to the “Tonal correction window”. Use the eyedropper to select a black spot where the black is particularly rich. Now enter: “Image”, “Adjustment”, “Auto Tone Correction”, then “Auto Contrast” and finally “Auto Color”.
- You can also make your soap bubbles shine even more by brightening the colored points of light. To do this, go to “Image” and then “Adjustment”, “Shadows/Highlights”, then “12% strength” and finally click “ok”.
- To intensify the colors of the entire image, you can change the saturation yourself. To do this, go to “Image”, then “Adjust”, “Hue/Saturation”, “Saturation” to 35% and then “ok”.
