Soap Bubbles Photographed to Look Like Psychedelic-Colored Planets in Space

For his project titled “Bubbles“, London-based photographer Jason Tozer photographed soap bubbles in a way that makes them look photos of planets taken from space. Unlike NASA’s actual space probe photos, Tozer’s images contain wild, psychedelic colors.

Tozer tells us that he uses a Hasselblad 503CW and a 135mm macro lens mounted on a set of extension bellows. The camera is equipped with a 65-megapixel PhaseOne digital back. He also made a huge 2×3-meter perspex dome for the lighting to capture the colors and details of each bubble. Changing the dome lighting gives the bubbles different appearances.

Regarding how he creates the bubbles themselves, here’s what he has to say:

All of these bubbles are sitting on a wet ring. This gives me time to set the focus and size of the bubble, and manipluate the colours if I choose to. I blow down a straw to excite the surface of the bubble & spin the colour bands around. Occasionally a bubble will last much much longer than the others and it becomes increasingly clear as the colour bands move to the base. If I blow carefully on these, I can sometimes create the almost colourless textures, the more moon like ones.

I use household detergent with a little bit of glycerine in the mix. That helps with the lengevity of the bubble.

The project’s inception came a couple of years ago when Tozer was testing out a new camera for a magazine. He decided to use the colors of soap bubbles to test out the camera, and “Bubbles” was born.

You can find more photos from this project over on Tozer’s website.

Bubbles by Jason Tozer (via Colossal)


Image credits: Photographs by Jason Tozer and used with permission

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