Bubbles, Ice and Birefringence

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

We had a hard freeze Saturday night. When I went to visit the ice on my pond, I discovered quite the mix of frozen bubbles and moving liquid bubbles from the waterfall. Finding Birefringence in the frozen bubbles was a surprising extra treat. Here’s a look at the mix, where the Birefringence is from particles of ice that were floating on the surface of the liquid bubbles.

Specific Feedback

This is cropped because the movement of the liquid bubbles meant that the edges of the frame were totally distorted in this 30 shot stack. The ice bits showing multiple edges are real as they are seen in single frames.

Technical Details

R5, 180 mm macro, 1/200 s, f/10, iso 3200, tripod and polarizer. Seeing the Birefringence requires using a polarizer.


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4 Likes

Mark, I have never seen anything like it. Sure makes good eye candy. So much see in this shot with all the colors, shapes and texture. I keep making out little people in some of the shapes. Excellent find and captured so nicely. Well done! :+1: :+1:

1 Like

This is so cool, Mark. We haven’t had a decent freeze yet and I have the pond shut down for the winter so no bubbles anyhow. But this has me thinking about how it might be recreated. The colors are awesome.

1 Like

This is a beautiful photo Mark, and you get triple bonus points for getting birefringence into your image title.

-Will

Will, no winter is complete without birefringence from Mark. What’s so interesting is that he finds it in new places - or at least I haven’t seen it in bubbles of his before. I’d award him more bonus points for keeping his reflection out as well! This is like something Chagall might have thought up. I do wish we’d get some ice here in Korea, it’s all up north!

1 Like

Mark: What a terrific find and a totally unique never to be duplicated image. Does your camera auto-stack? If so, how long does it take to take 30 frames? Sony doesn’t have that feature so all mine are manual and I doubt I could act fast enough to capture all the necessary frames without there being some subject movement. Kudos to you for your skill and expertise. >=))>

Bill, it just takes a few seconds to take 30 shots (provided the shutter speed is less than a second). There was significant motion in these frames, (Helicon’s preferences let you adjust how much it can deal with), that motion meant that I had to throw away the sides of the full frame and had to carefully work through the retouching to remove the most obvious motion artifacts. You do need to be sure that your ss is fast enough to freeze the motion in each shot.

Mark, I missed this one. Congrats on the EP…another fine bubble scene… :+1:

Congratulations, Mark. Awesome image!