Calgary photographer Chris Ratzlaff turned one of the coldest jobs in winter into a viral film. Working outdoors in deep Canadian cold, he blew soap bubbles onto frosty surfaces and filmed them as ice crystals spread across their thin skins, turning each bubble into a small glass globe covered in feathery frost.
Chris Ratzlaff’s frozen bubbles in Calgary
Ratzlaff shoots in conditions most Calgarians avoid. CBC News described him heading out when temperatures fall towards −25°C, and his film “frozen bubbles in calgary” shows the result in slow, close detail: the first crystals appear at one point on the film, then branch and swirl until the bubble is frosted over.
It took patience. “Probably a couple hundred bubbles were sacrificed in the making of the video,” he told CBC. “The bubbles are really, really fragile and they’ll pop at anything.” His later Boxing Day 2017 bubble videos, shot during another Calgary cold snap, passed 400,000 views, and he told CTV News simply: “People really like bubbles.”
How soap bubbles freeze
A soap bubble is a film of water held together by soap, only a fraction of a millimetre thick. In very cold air that water can stay liquid below 0°C, a state called supercooling, until something triggers ice to form. The trigger is a nucleation point: a speck of dust, a tiny flaw in the film or the cold surface where the bubble sits.
From that point, ice grows outward in dendritic, branching patterns, the same way a snowflake builds its arms. Speed changes the look. Fast freezing gives small, chaotic crystals and a cloudy bubble, while slower freezing produces the large, fern-like frost patterns that make the best photographs. Sugar and corn syrup thicken the film so it evaporates more slowly and survives long enough to freeze, and dish soap lowers the surface tension so bubbles grow larger and more stable.
Ratzlaff’s frozen bubble recipe
The mixture Ratzlaff shared with CBC is easy to make at home:
- 200 ml warm water
- 35 ml dish soap
- 35 ml corn syrup, which thickens the bubble wall
- 2 tablespoons sugar, which helps the bubble crystallise
Dissolve the sugar and syrup in the warm water, stir in the soap gently so it does not foam, then chill the mixture in the freezer until crystals start to form on the surface before taking it outside.
Tips for photographing frozen bubbles
- Use a surface. Ratzlaff blows bubbles onto snow, a frosty rail or another cold surface so they stick and have time to freeze before bursting.
- Pick a calm day. Wind pops bubbles almost instantly.
- Choose the cold. Bubbles need air of roughly −6°C or colder; around −12°C to −15°C freezes them slowly enough for clear, intricate patterns.
- Light from the side or behind. Low sun or a lamp behind the bubble makes the crystals glow against a dark background.
- Shoot the whole sequence. The most interesting frames often come early, when half the shell is still clear and the branches are spreading.
Dress for the conditions: at these temperatures exposed fingers stiffen quickly, so keep sessions short and warm up between attempts.
For the science behind moving ice crystals, read our frozen bubble film and explanation. For a different visual approach, compare ZALUSKArt’s Warsaw bubble photographs, and for a larger frozen-water project, try the ice-orb craft demonstration.
Related reading
- Freezing Soap Bubbles: Patterns Forming on a Delicate Surface
- Angela Kelly’s Frozen Bubbles: Ice Crystals, Reflections and Fragile Forms
- Frozen Bubbles at Mount Washington Observatory
- Soap Bubbles in a Thompson, Manitoba Winter
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