Dry Ice Ripples

Solid carbon dioxide held at water’s surface sublimes into milky waves of vapor.

Filming “smoke” without also capturing any background color in the shot is tricky. What’s trickier is filming the area directly above a body of water, brightly illuminating tiny floating particles of dry ice vapor, without also capturing the container floor or the image reflected on the water’s surface. Further complicating matters, the star of the show, dry ice, burns the skin and rapidly disappears at room temperature via sublimation (a direct transformation from solid to gas, skipping the liquid phase). I spent the better part of a week, night and day, with my video camera in a windowless room painted all black, to ensure not a speck of unwanted light entered.

16-minute seamless loop