There is something so very magical about frosty mornings and when my children were tiny (about five and seven) I happened to find a blog about freezing bubbles, so now every winter we look forward to doing this. After researching this further, I set my alarm for 3 am - yes, you read that right! - because the forecast predicted a temperature of 25 F that night, which sounded perfect for blowing bubbles and freezing them. Yes, I am sane! I decided not to mention any of this to my children as I didn't want them to be disappointed in case it didn't work. I also didn't mention this to my husband because he would have talked me out of getting up at 3am! I'm glad I did get up in the middle of the night though, because it took about ten attempts before I actually managed to successfully freeze one. I definitely froze before any bubbles did! Apparently, there is a knack to doing this and it involves blowing a bubble, laying it down gently and carefully on a frozen surface and waiting for it to freeze. The effect was exactly as I had hoped and a couple of very early mornings later, the forecast predicted another perfect frost. It was a beautiful, yet very cold, clear morning when my two children and I walked to the bus stop, and they were excited but surprised when I took out some bubbles and even more surprised when I told them to wait and watch. Luckily it only took two attempts for the bubbles to freeze and become almost solid. After a few seconds I told them they could touch the bubbles and one of them cracked and another collapsed. Once my children had left for school I decided to take some photographs but those were the days I just left the settings on auto. Still, I did get some really beautiful pictures. Unfortunately, it hasn't been cold enough this year though I did try to freeze some bubbles one recent morning but I didn't have much luck. I ended up just blowing bubbles instead and I soon realized that everything around the bubbles was reflected - and that's how I ended up with this photograph...

** This photograph is on display at the Wilma W Daniels Gallery, Downtown Wilmington, NC - so happy!

Well not quite. Just some logs of which we now have an abundance thanks to last September's hurricane. Obviously we were very lucky and there was no damage to our home but our backyard was effectively concealed by huge pines downed by Florence and the accompanying tornadoes. My husband cleared the majority of the debris and now he was ready to start burning them. He suggested I take some photographs and I am glad he did as I think the effects are actually really beautiful. I did play around with the colors a little in Adobe Lightroom Classic, which I am also learning to use. 

I also decided to play with my zoom lens and I set the long exposure to a second and quickly zoomed in and out, and yes, this really is just a metal burn barrel! I love how doing this distorted the movement of light... I actually discovered this by accident as one of children knocked my arm when I was taking a picture and it made me turn the lens by mistake.

In "photometry, luminous energy is the perceived energy of light". For our next assignment we were each given a word to work with and this was mine. I had recently learned how to take long exposure photographs but I hadn't actually put anything I had learned into practice yet. The first photographs I took were experiments and definitely trial and error using flash lights but the results were pretty impressive and exciting! I couldn't wait to get started. ​I had the most fun taking the above pictures, and my children especially couldn't wait to start drawing shapes and writing words with sparklers. I had always wondered how people managed to capture incredible pictures of light in motion. Apparently, drawing with light is thing. I am definitely hooked now and have bought more sparklers!