The Meyer Optik Goerlitz Lydith 30mm f/3.5 lens is a modern remake of an older optical design that is known for its ability to create “soap bubble” bokeh. To create this effect, you’ll want to focus on something close, with a distance between the close subject and a high contrast background.

I wanted to experiment with this “Lydith” effect, and to see how far I could take it. I added a variable extension tube (the Leica Macro-Adapter-M) between my camera (Leica 11MP) and the Lydith lens, and headed out to the garden at night with a tripod. I then practiced fairly long duration exposures (in the one to four second range) aimed at a color light source, focusing on optical refractions themselves rather than the light source.

The resulting abstract images, some shown here, are attractive, and are really about light itself. This is in keeping with one of the long-standing tenets of photography: the only thing you can capture as a matter of physics is light reflected or emitted by an object. You cannot capture the object itself. This kind of neo-Platonic paradox is referenced in the origins of the word photography. Its meaning is “to write with light.”