“I wonder how life will surprise me today
Early in the morning
It’s the dawn of a new day
New hopes new dreams new ways
I open up my heart and
I’m gon’ do my part and
Make this a positively beautiful day”
~India Arie
New Year’s morning. With the windchill, it was -46 out. We had been in a deep freeze for too many days and with no end in sight. I can only stay inside so many days so I needed a reason to get excited about life. Not that my life was terrible. I had my family, friends, great books to read and a warm fireplace to curl up by. Some days, though, you just need to wake up in the morning with new dreams and a few challenges to conquer.
Then I remembered a picture I’d seen several days earlier. Bubbles. Frozen bubbles. I had everything I needed. I could practice making bubble mixtures and I had lots of cold, frigid cold, air just outside my door. The colder the better. It seemed like such a simple project. Who knew that there were so many different bubble mixtures on the internet. Looking for glycerin when all the pharmacies were out was an interesting trip in itself. And I knew it was cold out but I never realized how cold until I was trying to blow bubbles, and focus my macro lens all within a very short time and with an even shorter depth of field. It took about 10 seconds for each bubble to freeze. There was a lot of trial and (mostly) error on my part and frozen fingers.
With every new bubble comes a unique new pattern and shape. The bubbles spin and dance as they react to the cold. Geometric crystals flutter across their surface like flakes in a snow globe.
So for the past several weeks this has been my challenge, my new hope and dream. To capture the bubbles as they suddenly freeze in motion, overtaken by the cold, but still so incredibly beautiful.
