When most children bemoan the hassle of donning a winter coat before heading outside to play in the snow, they receive a quick admonishment from their parents before being hurried out the door. For one little girl in Warsaw, however, a stubborn refusal to put on a jacket led to her father’s creation of a lyrical short film. In exchange for his daughter’s compliance with the coat, photographer Pablo Zaluska created for her Frozen soap bubbles, a vivid display of the poetry and power of the winter’s chill.

In demonstrating the cunning and ruthlessness of the cold, the photographer froze soap bubbles at -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). Like fugitive balloons, the bubbles held for only an instant before popping, meaning that the Zaluska was only able to capture as few as one in twenty before they vanished completely.

After seeing the visual ballad, composed in her honor, Zaluska’s three-year-old child became enchanted with wintertime and its many small miracles. Like the bubbles themselves, childhood lasts for only a blink of the eye, unless of course by some miracle it can be paused, fixed in place by the frigid winter air.