A bottle of corn syrup has been sitting on my kitchen counter for two months, but I repeatedly forgot to try the frozen bubble trick until this week. The stills and videos are online. The weather has to be cold for this to work - in the -10°C to -25°C range - and the air has to be calm or the bubbles will pop. You mix up a concoction and use a straw to blow bubbles onto a convenient surface; the ones that don't pop will slowly freeze, and the ice crystal formations are unique and infinitely variable.

Here's the formula I used: mix 35 ml of corn syrup with 200 ml warm water, add 35 ml dish soap and 2 T sugar. Stir. Cool in the freezer for a few minutes. The hardest part is learning to blow a bubble using a plastic straw. I made four 1-inch lengthwise cuts in one end, then splayed them back. This will usually allow the straw to pick up some of the viscous liquid, although it takes practice. Small bubbles are easier to blow, but larger bubbles are more fun.

After you do get a bubble to form, and while the freezing process is underway, you have a minute or two to play, so a little advance planning is required. Direct sun shining on the bubble is best. Backlighting is generally the most colourful and interesting. But then what? Most versions of this that I've seen include the entire bubble, and although beautiful, they all tend to look similar. But what if I used a tripod and macro lens stopped down a ridiculous amount and focused very closely? An attempt to abstract the frost crystals on the bubble's thin surface... light refracting from thousands of miniscule icy planes... the bubble's curvature eventually pushing the edges of my frame out of focus... why not?

The idea for a pano crop came later, based on where the interesting (and in focus) detail lay within my original framing. This is the bottom portion of the bubble; I've cropped out the base, where it sat on the flat railing of my front porch. The pinpoint coloured dots are not digital noise, but rather, tiny flashes of prismatic light from the ice crystals. Under normal circumstances I would seldom shoot at f/36, because loss of sharpness can be extreme at these tiny apertures. However, standing on my front porch in my winter parka and slippers at dawn in -20 temperatures while blowing bubbles can hardly be considered normal.

This bubble was about three and a half inches in diameter.

Photographed in Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2020 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   macro bubble frozen ice crystals close up pano panorama panoramic beauty shimmering refraction prismatic light ice icy soap bubble corn syrup water cold below freezing calm no breeze f/36 nearly normal fun, fun, fun front porch photography abstract abstraction beautiful copyrighted James R. Page

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My favourite Jan Johnson sculpture. Two men hold a captive to his knees. No further explanation needed.

For those who haven't been following this series, this week I've been posting images of the life work of the Sooke, British Columbia metal sculptor Jan Johnson. Jan was my friend from the mid-eighties until his death in 2011. I photographed his welded steel sculptures many times during his life, on film. A few years after he died, his widow, Mary Alice Johnson, bankrolled a high quality book to document his legacy. Many of his pieces are in private collections, but fortunately Jan was prolific. Mary had recalled all of his material from galleries, and a lot of great pieces were sitting there, just waiting for a photographer.

I made most of the shots in a corner of his studio, under natural light. The high key processing was intentional; I shot the project that way in an attempt to portray the work against a plain background with no distractions.

I think this shot illustrates how good Jan was at capturing gesture. The body language of his characters tells the story. As Jan grew older, his pieces became smaller - big metal sculptures are a pain to haul around! This one is 12 x 16 x 45 cm.

This and the other images featured here are from the book Irony in Steel. Written by Mija Lee, photographed by me, designed by Pam Woodland. If you are interested in purchasing, contact Mary Johnson via email: mary@almsculpture.com

Photographed in Sooke, Vancouver Island, BC (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2015 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   art metal sculpture Jan Johnson sculptor artist Re-education #3 steel welded steel war torture power man's inhumanity three figures gesture body language form social commentary Sooke BC British Columbia Canada copyrighted James R. Page

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Val Marie's Group of Four (photographers) were blessed (by me) with the assignment: broken. Here I offer a rather literal take on the theme. An appliance bulb above my kitchen sink burned out and then due to flawed design I couldn't unscrew it - had to remove the shade to properly grip the bulb but couldn't remove the shade with the bulb in place. I ended up wrapping a towel around the thing and using a screwdriver, with predictable results. After I had cleaned up the shower of fine glass particles, I shot this with macro lens and tripod, by window light. Broken.

I really wanted to call the assignment "piece of crap", sort of a tribute to Neil Young, but we are limited to one word. Here's Neil: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovum-GjYWKQ

Here are the other interpretations:
www.flickr.com/photos/redcalfstudio/8438864298/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/pjwoodland/8437879253/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/rwharwood/8439073530/in/contacts/

Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© James R. Page - all rights reserved

Tags:   broken appliance bulb light bulb filaments electrical electricity screw thread shattered glass white macro

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This week the Val Marie group of 4 assignment was "blue". I thought it would be difficult, but it wasn't. Although blue sky was nonexistent for most of the week, I found plenty of blue subjects around the house.

For this photo I had my camera on a tripod and the lens stopped down to a small aperture. Blueberries, of course, are more purple than blue, so I shot the first image at 2500 degrees K - which turned the daylight from my kitchen window very blue indeed. I could have done this in post processing, but wanted to see the result while shooting. Then I made a few shots using auto white balance, and finished with several out of focus shots from the same camera angle, at a wide f-stop. I ended up using one of these in the final composite.

In RAW adjustments, I boosted the contrast so that most of the middle tones were eliminated. Then in Photoshop I did some extreme sharpening, and sandwiched the shot with one of the out of focus images, adjusted the opacity until I had the blend I wanted, et voila!

Most important, though, is that the milk was poured OVER the frozen blueberries so that it partially froze too, and under the blueberries was some Greek yogurt, and under the Greek yogurt was some hot oatmeal with raisins. All of which I ate.

Here are the other interpretations of "blue":
www.flickr.com/photos/rwharwood/8394540138/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/redcalfstudio/8395152896/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/pjwoodland/8396790654/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/pjwoodland/8396790530/in/photostream

Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© James R. Page - all rights reserved

Tags:   blueberries blue composite tabletop bowl milk frozen digitally altered fruit berries breakfast yum

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The weekly challenge for Val Marie's Group of 4 was "thin" - thank you Colleen! I found this one difficult. I tried contrasting thin books against thick books, shooting a nacho chip edge-on, and finally turned to my electric guitar and really started looking. Everyone knows guitar strings are thin; their thinness is a given. No need to prove that. So now what? The quality of thin. I tried several approaches, finally settling on this macro shot of the low E and A strings, large f-stop to reduce depth of field. The monochrome conversion was an afterthought. The guitar's colour isn't relevant. This is about shape and line.

The others' interpretations:
www.flickr.com/photos/rwharwood/8321308257/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/redcalfstudio/8322038541/in/contacts/
www.flickr.com/photos/pjwoodland/8323700114/in/contacts/

Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© James R. Page - all rights reserved

Tags:   thin vertical abstract abstraction monochrome bw black and white strings E A guitar Fender Telecaster electric bokeh

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