Yes, there's a technique, the same one used in most advertsing photography.
I cheated.
Long-story-short: our cats love bubbles. While delayed at checkout at our Kroger grocery store, I saw a display for this ... goop ... that claimed longer lasting bubbles. It's really thick, but if you blow the bubbles upwards, they have enough time aloft to literally harden, in a squishy sticky kind of way. They also seem to somehow be lighter than your average soap bubble, as they stay aloft a long time. You might try looking at a toy store, I don't remember the product name, but I'd think it's pretty common if you look in the right place ... kid's stuff.
Anyway, I learned you could catch one on the wand you use to blow them, then use that one bubble to catch others, and make a chain of them (their semi-hardened surface is tacky, so they stick together). So I got a green soap dish, caught one bubble, then used it to catch a few more for the second image.
This is kind of a nifty image. I'm curious about your lighting though. I can see the rectangle reflected in the bubble. I'm wondering if that is studio softbox or an overhead flourescent?
For pixelpile what sort of lighting do you mostly use?
In this case, that's a big skylight in our kitchen. I knew it would provide a nice clean reflection.
In general, Pixel Piles are all over the place. It's predominantly available light ... whatever was there when a thing caught my eye. What often catches my eye is a natural pool or pattern of light, and then I'll try to find something to put in it. But when I'm shooting the Tiny Troops, Gumby, etc, I use tungsten lights (it's actually the tungsten modeling light from a studio strobe head) and simple white and silver cards to reflect in fill light as needed.
Then sometimes I'll have a one-off idea, like the recent glass shots. I just mixed and matched them on the lightbox I use to view slides.
