Captivating Chemistry

Leonardo Baldassarre, research fellow at the University of Nottingham, has won the Huddersfield and District Local Section annual photography competition. Leonardo won £200 for his winning photo, titled ‘A Bubble of Colours.’

He said: "I have always been fascinated by the beauty of the infinite shades of colour of soap bubbles. But how to immortalise the diaphanous rainbow of an ephemeral soap bubble? I used glycerol as an elixir of life: soap bubbles become sturdy crystalline domes, their colours shine in the soft light against the black background and its beauty is ready to be captured by the camera."

The colour vortices are caused by the different layers of water trapped between surfactant layers.

Taken with a Canon EOS 100D with a Helios 44-2 58mm at f/10 used with a reversing ring. A single softbox was used to illuminate the subject from the top against a black background.