Planets in a waterdish

June 18, 2008 6:28 AM

Is that Jupiter or Saturn? Or perhaps a picture of extrasolar planets? Nope, it's one of Jason Tozer's beautiful pictures of soap bubbles. The Creative Review blog has a post about how Tozer took the pictures.

More pictures by Jason Tozer can be found on his website.

posted by Kattullus (14 comments total)

a bit of glucose is apparently the key

Does he mean glycerin or does that get created as a byproduct of adding glucose?

It would be really cool to do that photo again but put a little spin on it (blowing air through the straw?) to try to get the swirls to line up more like Saturn and Jupiter really are.
posted by DU at 6:41 AM on June 18, 2008

beats my psychedelic seven-colour moon geography background.
posted by parmanparman at 6:54 AM on June 18, 2008

Neato. If you like soap bubbles and other objects in yer pictures, check out Mandolux, previously on MeFi.
posted by sadiehawkinstein at 7:21 AM on June 18, 2008

Those photos are awesome. It's so refreshing to see awesome photos that haven't been Photoshop-ed to death. Thanks for sharing.
posted by geeky at 7:54 AM on June 18, 2008

Neat. And something to try myself when I get some free time.

The one thing I miss about quitting smoking is blowing bubbles. There was something very cool about filling up a bubble with smoke and watching it drift around. I suspect there would be some good photo opportunities in that as well.
posted by quin at 8:32 AM on June 18, 2008

I like how that whole behind-the-scenes blog post basically boils down to "He made bubbles, and took pictures of them. With a camera."
posted by rusty at 8:34 AM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

beautiful! thanks for this
posted by jammy at 9:09 AM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

rusty, you forgot the bit where they explained that he used a background and bright lights.
posted by quin at 9:21 AM on June 18, 2008

quin: I don't understand that kind of photographic technical mumbo-jumbo. My own camera just blinks 12:00:00 over and over unless I can get a teenager to set it for me.
posted by rusty at 10:03 AM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

good marketing.
posted by fake at 10:50 AM on June 18, 2008

I love macrophotography. For more, see the works of Chris Parks. Peter Parks, his father, did the amazing effects for Aronofsky's 'The Fountain'.
posted by eclectist at 11:59 AM on June 18, 2008

Wow, I didn't know anyone else had done this. I took most of these images in 2004.

I used a toy called a bubblescope.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:06 PM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Now that looks like a planet!
posted by DU at 6:28 PM on June 18, 2008

That's so neat -- I'd long loved looking at the patterns on bubbles, how the light refracting off the inner and outer edges changes depending on how thick the bubble is... But I never thought of them as looking planet-like until now. Thanks for adding another association to bubbles!
posted by not_on_display at 7:39 PM on June 18, 2008