Get The Best Bubbles For Your Bubble Bath Photos.

I was cruising through YouTube recently, when I came across a video by a really great photographer from Australia. He does a lot of tutorial videos, and workshops on photography.

So well known is he that he gets flown all over the world to help mentor those interested in photography. What a great sounding life right?

I digress.

Nikki Shot at – f/9.0 1/50sec at ISO 100 with a 24-70mm

He had this incredible model and was doing some photos of her in this great tub of a hotel they were in, and while the photos were great as was the advice I think he missed one thing that could have made his bubble bath better for the photos.

For my long term “fans” you may remember when I was going through the phase where every girl I photographed wanted to be shot in the tub with bubbles. Well I was known for a while for having some of the best bubble bath photos out there and certainly the best bubbles.

Girls came from all over to shoot in that tub and the results were amazing. It was like I had a secret bubble recipe. The funny thing is I discovered this recipe entirely by mistake. But we’ll come back to this.

Lighting The Tub:

I shot these photos of Nikki using two lights and the ambient light from outside as a kicker.

Camera right I had a softbox with a hot light in it. Camera left was a 300ws strobe set to the lowest power setting.

The strobe had an umbrella on it and I bounced the light off of the umbrella which gave it a nice spread around the entire area giving a nice mix of available and strobe light. My camera settings were something like f/9.0 1/50sec at ISO 100 with a 24-70mm.

What learned was that; had I cranked up the shutter speed to 1/60 sec more of my shots would have been in focus. Doom on DJ. But we still came away with a lot of great shots.

When Jenny Chaos came over one night at around 9pm to shoot the tub. Working with Jenny was always a treat. I think she’s like six feet tall. Had the figure of a runway model; and best of all was just a down ass model.

She was fun, sarcastic, and had a million ideas. I’d shot with her once before that in her absolutely destroyed home while it was being remodeled.

For this shoot I wanted to create more a candle light/ fireplace look and I don’t know if I accomplished it; but I used one hot light in a softbox. We filled the tub with warm water. Actually I think it was hotter than warm. That is an important part of the mixture.

Also it’s good to get about 2 – 3 inches of hot water into the tub before adding the secret bubble solution. Are you ready for the big reveal?

When we shot Nikki in that tub (she was the first girl I did that with) my assistant and I discovered we had no bubble bath and I of course thought; ‘what could it hurt?’ Instead of using a typical bubble bath type product we used Dawn dishwashing soap out of the bottle.

The bubbles it makes are substantial. The big difference is that the typical bubble bath solutions make bubbles that are just that. Bubbles. Like the ones you blow and make bubble up. If your subject moves there go the bubbles.

My girls were able to stand up out of the water move around a bit and still keep the bubbles covering what they wanted to cover. I’m sure that other dishwashing soaps can work but I found the Dawn seems to work the best.

Let me know if you’ve tried doing a bubble bath shoot and how that turned out. Or if you’re planning one; let me know.