365 Day 86 - More oily bubbles

365 Day 86 - More oily bubbles

What a week! On Monday I had an email telling me that I had come second in a Grand National photography competition and had won a crate of Crabbies ginger beer and £250 Jessops vouchers, both of which will be put to good use. It was a bit of a tin pot competition aimed at promoting Crabbies who are sponsoring this year's Grand National and whilst I was really pleased to get into the final 10, and indeed come second, the final winner was chosen by 'likes' on Facebook and I obviously don't have enough friends! Yesterday I learned that I had passed my second OCA course, Digital Photographic Practice and to say I was pleased and relieved is an understatement. Expect some 'people' pictures over the coming months as I have just signed up for 'People and Place'.

Today I had plans to go into the Forest of Dean with my camera but fate worked against me. I have an internet connection that drops out every time I pick the phone up and have spent the day trying to sort that out instead, the result being I haven't been over the doorstep. However...the new Digital Photography dropped through my door the other day and in it is an article on oil on water bubbles, written by Mandy D. I dabbled with this fairly recently but thought I would try and put some of Mandy's tips into practice. For a start, she has the bowl of water sitting on a piece of glass which is propped on CD cases, or in my case books. This way the background can be changed without disturbing the water, which is tricky enough to keep still as it is. I previously tried to light my setting from underneath but Mandy uses a macro flash. I don't have one of those but made do with a desk lamp on one side and an off camera flash on the other. This worked quite well as you can move the flash around to get different effects. The other thing that Mandy recommends is adding a drop of washing up liquid to the water before the oil and that also worked better than my previous efforts. It seems to break the bubbles up but stabilise them at the same time. I also used olive oil as recommended as opposed to some old nut oil that had passed its use by date by about 8 years and had a much clearer solution as a result. Not yet perfect, but more confident that I'm on the right tracks....