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Popping Bubble

This shot was an accident. I hadn't meant to photograph a bubble popping. It was a very happy accident though. It showed me that it's possible to photograph a bubble bursting!

 

There's some editing here to bring out the popping effect on the bottom left. The editing is curves adjustment, a sharpen, some highlight, and saturation.

 

I didn't think the relatively slow shutter speed of 1/200 would capture the bubble popping, but it has. Take a CLOSE LOOK at that bottom left hand corner. It's weird alright! It looks like it's imploding. I'd suspect that the whole process of popping happens in 1/100th of a second - it's just too quick to see. So, to have it popping while still being able to see the reflection - it's a rare moment!

 

The strange thing about popping, I think, is that it's neither really an explosion or an implosion (I might be wrong on this though), because the air inside isn't a higher or lower pressure than outside. Does that make sense. Maybe it's ever so slightly higher, but surely it can't be much higher, as the soap/water film is just that, a very thin film. It's more a peeling or unzipping!

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Uploaded on May 1, 2009
Taken on May 1, 2009