“I wonder how life will surprise me today”
~India Arie (A Beautiful Day)
I have always loved the idea of photography as being a way of taking an instant out of time, and preserving that moment forever. By freezing time in this way, a photograph can show something that may not normally be seen in day-to-day life, and can make an ordinary subject extraordinary.
January 22. I looked out the window and my world was covered in hoar frost. I looked up the definition of hoar frost, a deposit of ice crystals on objects exposed to the free air, such as grass blades, tree branches, or leaves. It is formed by direct condensation of water vapour to ice at temperatures below freezing and occurs when air is brought to its frost point by cooling. That may be the scientific explanation but to me it was another day to get out my camera. A magical world preserved forever in a photograph. My brain was exploding with ideas and bubbles…
Was it cold enough out for the bubbles to freeze? I had already discovered that the colder the weather, the more the snowflakes danced inside the bubble snow globes. Temperature wise the air was warmer today. What would happen in the hoar frost?
It took a lot longer for the bubbles to freeze. There was a breeze that morning, so the bubbles broke before I could capture them. The frost patterns and shapes were different that morning. Then life surprised me again and I captured a bubble exploding. My photograph showed something that happened so quickly that my mind couldn’t capture it (1/640 of a second) – a soap bubble with one part completely intact and the other part made up of separate swirls of liquid as it burst.
With every new day and every new bubble comes a unique new pattern and shape. And then your camera freezes that one moment, an extraordinary surprise.
