Liquid Sculpture: High speed photography

September 20, 2005 8:51 AM

Liquid Sculpture: (beautiful high-speed and fine-art photography of drops and splashes) owes a debt of thanks to Harold Edgerton, inventor of high-speed stroboscopic photography. A class on high-speed photography at the Edgerton Exploration Center starts in 4 days in Aurora, NE.
posted by spock (16 comments total)

For more supercalistroboscopic high-speed photography, check out the web page of 6.163 Strobe Project Laboratory, run by MIT's Edgerton Center. (Class started the day after the day after Labor Day, the gallery is from semesters past.)
posted by whatzit at 9:05 AM on September 20, 2005

Just like the rest of the internet, the pournography is the best part.
posted by ook at 9:06 AM on September 20, 2005

Agreed, ook. What a terrible (in a good way) bunch of titles they have to go with them, too...
posted by whatzit at 9:15 AM on September 20, 2005

Somehow I dropped an "h" in the last link. Corrected link: A class on high-speed photography starts in 4 days.
posted by spock at 9:25 AM on September 20, 2005

Very nice. I was going to say that, too, whatzit. The titles are excruciatingly bad.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:35 AM on September 20, 2005

Yeah, beautiful photographs, absolutely horrific titles. TheAmazingJugglingNipple? No. Just... no.
posted by Specklet at 9:38 AM on September 20, 2005

Yeah, beautiful photographs, absolutely horrific titles. TheAmazingJugglingNipple? No. Just... no.

"Pournography". Heh heh.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 9:48 AM on September 20, 2005

Very nice. I checked the FAQs where he doesn't say anything about retouching these pictures, but I wondered on some of them. I liked this from the FAQ:

Will you be quitting your day job?

Everyone at work says I should. My family is not so enthusiastic.

posted by OmieWise at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2005

Oh my! It is humbling when the pros show up with their high speed cameras and big lights and everything.

Regardless of the lame ass punny titles, the images are incredible. There's a reason photographers aren't comedy writers.
posted by fenriq at 10:20 AM on September 20, 2005

My brother took freshman physics from Doc Edgerton. It turns out it was the last class he taught before he went to emeritus status.

Terry (my brother) said the final exam was one of the best experiences he ever had.

It was a dinner held out at Edgerton's house, and everyone either had to bring a side dish, a story, or a musical instrument, or things wouldn't go well, final grade-wise.

Edgerton played bones apparently, and knew a vast number of old-timey folk and bluegrass tunes.

I still have the negatives of a photo my brother took for the lab part of the class of a 30.06 bullet slicing a Jack of Diamond cleanly in two.
posted by Relay at 10:24 AM on September 20, 2005

The site has been borked?
posted by erebora at 11:44 AM on September 20, 2005

Seems like it. I've tried a few times but got nothing.
posted by gwint at 12:14 PM on September 20, 2005

It's still working here.
posted by spock at 12:19 PM on September 20, 2005

spock, maybe you've got a version cached locally?
posted by gwint at 1:15 PM on September 20, 2005

No, I did a forced reload to make sure I was doing a new server request. However, now I get a "http://host45.hrwebservices.net/suspended.page/" so I'm assuming we used up all their bandwidth. Check again on the first.
posted by spock at 2:03 PM on September 20, 2005

When I met Doc Edgerton, more than 25 years ago, I realized--as I have only a handful of times in my life--that I was in the company of a truly unusual and brilliant person. Not only was it clear that he had a different way of thinking, he had a different way of being.
posted by ahimsakid at 6:51 PM on September 20, 2005