Experimental Sparkle Bloom

We had some really cold nights for a while there, which allowed me lots of fun with frozen bubbbles. But when it warmed up on the day after Christmas, my husband put the osteospermum plants out on the front steps to enjoy the sunshine. One of the blooms fell off, and I stuck it in water. That's how this all began.

As I was washing dishes after that, I noticed how the surface tension of the water was doing interesting things with the bloom, and I took some photos of the flowers on the kitchen window sill. I saw bubbles with the blooms in the late-day light, and I thought they were a cool part of the show.

Well, of course, the next day, I had more ideas. And I saw something neat that got me thinking even more. In one of the groups I'm in on Facebook, a guy posted a photo of a green apple covered in bubbles, against a blue background.

He explained that he'd bought a 10-gallon fish tank, filled it with seltzer water (how much did THAT cost?), and placed an apple in it. Every item he placed in the tank, he photographed, covered in bubbles. The effect was very cool. (He didn't go into how he handled lighting, and how he got the blue background; I realize these too are interesting questions.)

So what did I do? I cut another bloom and placed it in a glass of old (clear) diet soda from the fridge. But my soda was REALLY old, and flat, and made hardly any bubbles. Oh well. (I bet I have a whole 2-liter bottle of clear soda somewhere here to mess with, and I will probably eventually get around to that.)

So what did I do? I dumped out my flat soda and put the flower in water instead, and started again. I have a plastic thingy that used to have a calendar in, and I placed an el cheapo purple headlamp beneath the plastic.

On top of the plastic, I placed the glass with the water and the flower. Then I turned ON the headlamp beneath the glass of water/flower, turned off the overhead lights, and took pictures. 

This was one of my better shots. You're getting the light from beneath, and just a bit of the purple of the headlamp. It may look like the flower's on ice, but for once, it is not.

I tend to enjoy photography like this more in winter time, when there's not so much to photograph sometimes in the outside world, and the light here is so gray. So here is another fun experimental photo shoot that celebrates the glory of ostespermum on a winter's day.

My soundtrack song is Miley Cyrus, covering Tom Petty's song Wildflowers on the Howard Stern show. Music starts around a minute in. She does a wonderful job on it.

Link: another blip-shot with such a flower, using a different treatment.