The Pop

Like children, bubbles are not the easiest to freeze in time, ergo children with bubbles being original, are quite the nightmare without thinking ahead to bring a rabbit’s foot, or 4 leaf clover with you.

Starting with vision, it is a tad bit hard to neither confirm nor deny not only where the artist was going, or where the viewer should go here. 2 panels here leave the viewer hungry for more of the story, which will affect the impact here as well, so a 3 ½ is quite generous, seeing as the timing of the shot with the breaking of the bubble is impossible to contrive, so an extra half point is warranted for having good luck! 2 panels are just not enough, 2+ more would have brought this as high as 4 1/2 .

Is this original? Well yes and no… This model, this venue, this light source, the surrounding environment makes this a sturdy 4 in originality. Most times we see boring children or adult females blowing bubbles in an indoor/outdoor setting, which this breaks free from, and gives the image the respect due for being able to “do its own thing”, without even the fear for the standard mediocrity of bubble blowing “dime-a-dozen” images to affect it with its jaded place in the community.

4 stars for technique were arrived at after a battle of half-pointers. The watermark taking away some of the focus cost a half-point when the image was enlarged, but the fact that a larger image was available for viewing returned the half-point. The luck of catching the burst, the angle of the shot, catching the various reflections from anywhere to everywhere in the bubble, the trusting of the existing light source to keep the image “real” and “engageable”, and the overall trusting of the artist to allow the human subject, and the camera itself reinforces the validity of the 4 stars. 2 or more panels added could have raised this to a 4 ½ - 5

3 ½ for impact is indeed expect from the vision. 4 panels here would have given the viewer a much more fulfilling story to digest, but alas, as I stated earlier, the artist has no guarantees as to what a bubble will or will not do, but… A little preparation could have been done, and several shots in rapid succession could have been done, hoping for the best as the shutter lets loose. Like the vision, 3 stars is earned, and a half-point bonus for luck.

Overall the image is loaded with 5 star potential, but in need of further backstory, which may or may not had been realistic at the time of the shot, but in my opinion is a sturdy 3 ¾ star average piece. I saw a revamp of this image, using only the one “burst” panel, and I prefer the before and after here, as opposed to the 1 star vision and impact of the updated single panel submission.