Yesterday we went to an Oktoberfest celebration at Reston Town Center, where I tried (with very little success) to photograph the bubbles that were flowing out of a bubble machine at one of the booths. In the process a security guard stopped me. “You’re not allowed to photograph the buildings,” he said. I told him I wasn’t shooting the buildings but the bubbles. He didn’t care. The bubbles were in front of the buildings. That’s all that mattered to him.

Bubbles are difficult to capture for other reasons, too. They flow and float and, worst of all, they pop! They are winsome and ephemeral and fickle. Photographing them is perhaps best left to the experts. But I had fun trying.