Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
I’ve been following Aurum Light’s “milk dress” photography for a few years now. It’s an amazing technique that’s been imitated a bunch, but nobody else really seems to make it stand out in the way photographer Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz and his team do. And he’s able to do it consistently, too, regularly pumping out new work and it always has that same impact.
This time, though, I think he’s really outdone himself, with the “Villains Edition” of his Splash Heroes calendar for 2020.
LED flash still hasn’t really hit the mainstream yet. There are a couple of products out there, of course, like the Rotolite Neo, but for the most part, there’s still not very good for general use. They’re just not powerful enough. But sometimes they can be perfect for the intended use. In particular, high-speed events. This is because you can get an extremely fast flash duration.
You can buy these sorts of light, but they aren’t common and they aren’t cheap. So, tinkerer Tyler Gerritsen thought he’d have a go at making his own. And the results it produces are pretty outstanding.
This video from the Insuurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) takes us behind the scenes to see their camera rigs for shooting video and stills of car crashes. The footage and photos they produce are used to help make vehicles safer in the event of a crash, but it’s also used a lot for other research and it’s even appeared in movies.
It takes a whole lot of rather technical planning and preparation to get each shot and to be able to repeat it with multiple vehicles over a period of time. Every camera is calibrated, measured and positioned very exactly to be able to reproduce the same shot days or even months apart.
Photographer Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz has shared his splendid work with us before. His signature technique is high-speed photography of models “dressed” in milk splashes. After Milky Pin-Ups, Splash Heroes and Fallen Angels, Jaroslav has created another stunning series for 2018 calendar and he shared the work with DIYP. This time, he blends pin-up style with the inspiration from popular movies.
In his latest series, you can see Morticia Addams, Jessica Rabbit, Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction, to name just a few. All of the models bring together pin-up style, movie references, and of course – lots of colorful milk splashes.
As much as I love going out and using gear and creating stuff with it, I can’t help but get excited about the geeky technical side of photography and video, too. This particular video from Curious Droid talks about ultra high speed cameras. And while the Panasonic GH5 with its 180fps 4K footage is quite impressive, we’re talking cameras that shoot millions of frames per second.
I had wondered in the past how cameras had managed to track objects in slow motion moving at or over the speed of sound. And we’ve all seen the nuclear test footage of bombs exploding in slow motion. But how did they manage this? Especially given the technology of the day? Turns out, it’s all down to mirrors.
High-speed cameras are certainly useful for slow motion, but they can also find their application in science. Elias Kristensson and Andreas Ehn, researchers at Swedish Lund University, have revealed the world’s fastest high-speed camera. It’s able to capture as many as five trillion frames per second. This sounds astonishing only when you try to read this number, and what’s especially impressive is that camera can visualize the movement of light. It can capture the events as short as 0.2 trillionths of a second.
To demonstrate the speed of this camera, the researchers filmed a group of photons. They are traveling a distance of a paper’s thickness at 671 million mph. Yet, this camera makes it seem as if they’re moving slowly.
High speed photography for stills presents a whole lot of challenges, just for a single image. When you’re trying to capture a thousand, ten thousand or a hundred thousand of them every second, those challenges quickly compound.
Whether stills or video, the key ingredient is light, and lots of it. This is why The Slow Mo Guys often spend their time shooting outdoors. It also explains why they seem to spend most of their time in states like Texas and Nevada. But Gavin Free, one of the Slow Mo Guys, has posted up a video on their second channel going through some of the other technical challenges they face when filming.
According to theoretical physics, nothing is faster than the speed of light. However, now you can see with your own eyes the first ever recording of a “sonic boom” – created by light. Or scientifically called a photonic Mach cone. It was recorded by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, and they used a custom high-speed camera to make the footage.
You’ve heard about sonic booms, and you’ve probably heard one at least once. They occur when an object exceeds the speed of sound. But if nothing is theoretically faster than light – how did they do this? In the description, the setting seems simple, and they built the custom high-speed camera – the fastest one in the world.
Since 1932, vaunted Swiss watchmaker Omega has served as Official Timekeeper at the Olympic Games 26 times. This year at the Rio Olympics, Omega is once again providing finish line cameras to provide officials and the public with the most precise view of the athletes.
The current generation of cameras, dubbed the Scan ‘O’ Vision debuted at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. The current version, Myria, is now capable of taking 10,000 scans per second; a dramatic improvement from 2,000 sps at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. But the camera isn’t the only improvement.
If you’ve ever seen a rocket engine in action, you probably noticed the bright flame that emerges from the back of it. In fact, that bright fire was probably just an overexposed blob. Nasa’s new High Dynamic Camera system – the HiDyRS-X uses HDR techniques to show that wonderful flame in all its glory. It does so using a special sensor with built in HDR abilities.
First here is the high speed movie of the rocket engine:
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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