This photo was taken with a relatively old Fuji compact in a square in Lausanne, Switzerland and I was just very lucky on that day. The right time, place and conditions prevaled for me to capture what is both such a simple but also complex picture. It is beautiful but almost bland unless you start looking at the detail in the reflections in the bubble and the physical process that is taking place. I called this photo Brief Existence because it is almost an instant in time. The bubble and photons that illuminated it ‘lived’ very briefly in our human terms. In a moment for most of us it and they were gone but where to? The mass and energy were and are still here but not in the forms so pleasing to the human eye. As Einstein said, matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed but are interchangeable. Like our own brief lives compared with the ages of matter and energy the ‘lives’ of the bubble and the photons were quickly over.