Name: Ripple effects
Brand: sciencemag.org
SKU: sciencemag-org-102
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Ripple effects

preview

Science&nbsp;cover photos spring from many sources. Some, portraying a particular moment or event, are supplied from photo agencies specializing in science subjects. Others may come from organizations like NASA. Often a professional is hired to create an image tailored to a story. But when a paper is chosen for the cover, sometimes it happens that a member of the researcher’s team has the right blend of scientific knowledge, photographic technique, and visual imagination to produce the kind of dramatic image we need for the cover. That combination produced this week’s remarkable picture capturing a bubble in midcollapse.The paper, “,” included videos and black-and-white still photos of bubbles collapsing, deforming into intriguing wavelike patterns. These looked promising but lacked some necessary qualities. For the cover, I needed a vertically framed image, with more controlled lighting that would direct attention to the unusual ripples created as the bubble collapsed. I contacted James Bird, one of the paper’s authors. It turned out that a member of his Boston University lab, Oliver McRae, was already in the lab to carry out separate COVID-19–related research and was happy to&nbsp;document the results of the bubble experiments.I began working with McRae, who turned out to be a skilled photographer with a flair for solving challenges encountered when photographing the small-scale realm of the bubbles during the few seconds they existed. The bubbles, McRae explained, were formed by injecting air bubbles just below the surface of a dense silicone oil, some 2.5 million times more viscous than water. Honey, McRae noted, was a mere 20,000 times more viscous than water. In the thick silicone oil, the bubbles took about 10 minutes to rise to the surface and form.McRae’s first picture nicely showed the unusual ripples, but the composition was cluttered, with distractions on the bubble surface and background.The next attempt was more dramatic, with a neutral background and strong highlights emphasizing the ripples. But the image had too much contrast, and the higher shooting angle reduced the view of the curved bubble shape.I asked McRae if he could shoot from the original lower angle of the first picture and soften the lighting. But this attempt didn’t provide enough contrast, and the lighting didn’t capture the clear quality of the bubble. I asked if McRae could make adjustments, giving the bubble more transparency.McRae sent me a picture of his lighting setup while we discussed the challenges and his process for making these pictures. As the bubble slowly rises to the surface, he checks his lighting setup and camera focus. “If I were just taking a picture of the bubble it would be simple, but I am taking a picture of the collapse. I use a fast shutter speed, so it doesn’t look blurry. As a result, I need a lot of light—three high-intensity lights. They pump out a lot of heat. When I started out, the heat from the lights melted the bubble,” he said.In a careful choreography, McRae focuses his camera on the rising bubble, using a much cooler and less intense overhead light. When the bubble is big enough, he quickly turns on his three main lights and begins photographing. “I set the camera to take eight shots per second, then pop the bubble with a needle. The entire collapse only takes about 1 second,” McRae said.For the image chosen for the cover, McRae painted a shallow container matte black, providing a clean background for the bubble to form. But the key to the picture was a simple piece of plastic—a diffuser. This square of translucent material, placed between the bubble and the three lights, softened the illumination of the rippling bubble’s final moments. “The power it had gave me fine control of the contrast in the image,” McRae said. The result was an otherworldly image preserving a fleeting moment of collapse.Bill Douthitt is the Photography Managing Editor at Science.© 2020 . All rights Reserved. AAAS is a partner of , , , , , and .

Science&nbsp;cover photos spring from many sources. Some, portraying a particular moment or event, are supplied from photo agencies specializing in science subjects. Others may come from organizations like NASA. Often a professional is hired to create an image tailored to a story. But when a paper is chosen for the cover, sometimes it happens that a member of the researcher’s team has the right blend of scientific knowledge, photographic technique, and visual imagination to produce the kind of dramatic image we need for the cover. That combination produced this week’s remarkable picture...

public

Science, also widely referred to as Science Magazine, is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the world's top academic journals. It was first published in 1880, is currently circulated weekly and has a subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve a larger audience, its estimated readership is 570,400 people.

Ripple effects

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS