I’m stuck at home a lot. You probably are as well. But we can still experiment and be creative with our photography — and it doesn’t need to cost very much.
Keeping expenses low
I wanted something simple. I have minimal equipment and wanted to experiment with items found around the house. I already had a Lensbaby Edge 35 Optic lens (B&H | Amazon), so I purchased their Macro Converters (B&H | Amazon) so I could do macro photography. This would be one of my first experiments!
Hand sanitizer bubbles
With the amount of hoarding many have done during this pandemic, I know that just about everyone has hand sanitizer at their house. We keep some in the car.
I emptied some of the hand sanitizer I had into a glass container that had a flat surface. Why? The hand sanitizer bottle I had was small and curved and had labels. I thought I would try a slightly larger bottle with flat surfaces.
This was one of my less successful experiments. I just didn’t like the way they were coming out and struggled with getting focus. The shallow depth of field I had made it very difficult to get anything in focus since all the bubbles were on different planes.
Not quite the best container for the job
The container I used was slightly too small, and I could see the edges, which I’ve cropped out here. This was a formerly a spice container, so I would recommend something slightly larger. Or you can photograph from the hand sanitizer bottle itself if you can soak the label off and it has a flat surface. If you do not have a flat surface, it readily distorts the bubbles.
After getting focus, I turned off all the lights and closed the windows so it was relatively dark. I illuminated this with the Luxli Viola with a red light coming from camera left, as seen above, and a handheld ProtoMachines LED2 coming from the right and above. You can see the ProtoMachines here laying on the table.
Don’t forget
Thoroughly clean the bottle and peel off any labels and scrub the bottle before using. Every single blemish seems to show up if you don’t.
Exploring is fun!
The whole idea here is having fun and exploring. What do the various items around your house look like under a proverbial microscope? Not only can you find out — you can take photos of them.
