Moment of Impact: the amazing photography of Alan Sailer
Alan Sailer was an obscure photographer, shooting stuff with a pellet gun and a home-made microsecond flash. Then the social networks found him. By Rob Beschizza
Alan Sailer says he was an obscure photographer, working in his garage, shooting stuff with a pellet gun and capturing the results with a home-made microsecond flash. All it took was one picture to become a sudden hit on the social networks.
"My boss came by one day and told me my site was getting a huge number of views," he wrote on his Flickr page. "Emails from magazines, newspapers and even Good Morning America started clogging my FlickrMail box. It was very stressful."
Above, a lime and a lightbulb annihilate one another at great speed.
A gelatin-filled Christmas ornament disintegrates on contact with an old keyboard. Alan shoots his amazing photos using a hand-made, high-speed flash, which he constructed after studying articles at Scientific American and elsewhere: "If you do decide to try and build a flash from this information, please be careful. The main storage capacitor is pure death."
A ball of Play-Doh impacts a block of clay at 270 feet per second. Alan uses a Nikon D90 for most of his shots; the flash unit cost him about $300 to build.
Shot from a distance of just a few inches, a key lime makes short work of a slab of beef.
Alan describes this chaotic scene: "A glass and plastic-flower piece of junk gets sent to the dustbin by a fast-moving tea candle."
Some cashew nuts on the kitchen table "attracted my attention," he writes.
To create this chessboard scene, Alan replaced a piece's head with a less solid material to get a better effect. Though he wanted to use a configuration from a classic master game, they proved visually uninteresting. "It is probably an arrangement that is impossible by real world chess rules," he adds. "Deal with it."
This effect was created by loading up a Christmas ornament with paint and shooting it: "I tried dripping some of the paint on a gelatin filled globe, like the Sherwin-Williams logo. Crappy. But filling the globes looks good."
Cockygate defeated: judge finds "Cocky" trademark for romance titles unenforceable
You'll recall that self-published romance author Faleena Hopkins undertook the sociopathic step of registering a trademark on the word "Cocky" in the titles of romance novels and then had her rivals' works removed from Amazon, threatening to sue any writer who used the common word in a title in the future.
READ THE REST
France's Front National (who support the EU's mandatory copyright filters) furious when Youtube's copyright filters kill their channel
On June 20, an EU committee will vote on mandatory copyright filters -- the idea that everything that gets posted to an EU service should be checked for copyright violations by a machine learning system that will decide what gets published and what gets censored.
READ THE REST
A musical salute to Father's Day, courtesy of Groucho Marx and Junior Bear
Behold, my two most favorite pieces of Father's Day media. I'm thousands of miles from my own family today, but I'm celebrating Father's Day in my own way.
READ THE REST
This flexible camera pinpoints problems at the source
The human eye is a powerful thing, but it’s not so great at seeing in the dark or around tight spaces, which is partially why most of us struggle with unplugging drains, cleaning under the fridge, and other hard-to-reach jobs. This 1080p HD Waterproof WiFi Wireless Endoscopic Camera, however, gives you the flexibility necessary to get […]
READ THE REST
These top-rated apps can elevate your Mac's potential
Macs are undeniably some of the most versatile computers on the market, but they can do so much more than what their stock apps allow. For those looking to get the most out of their Mac hardware, the Pay What You Want 2018 Super Mac Bundle features 10 of the industry’s top apps, including photo editors and […]
READ THE REST
How these Salesforce courses can improve your job prospects
Salesforce has reinvented the way companies manage customer information, close deals, and ultimately drive revenue, so it should come as no surprise that it’s one of the more valuable skills you can list on your resume today. In fact, according to research from Burning Glass, this platform is now the 7th most in-demand software skill, beating out […]
