Focus On Lighting Photos Focus on the Fundamentals.pdf

Freezing motion
We can shoot this photo of a strawberry
splash manually. Musicians
and athletes are probably better at
this. Galileo, a professional-caliber
musician, sang to time his gravitational
acceleration experiments.
Every sprinter knows the rhythm
of the start count beginning with
“on your mark.” Paul Fuqua, one
of Fil’s co-authors on Light—
Science & Magic, and Fil, one of
the co-authors of this book, once
captured a bullet emerging from
a pistol with a “one, two, three”
count. Anyone can do this without
any new equipment. Still, if we
have a special interest in freezing
motion and want to do this over
and over, electronic devices are
more reliable. We’ll talk about
the more reliable, electronic way
because that’s the way this picture
was done, but be assured that
we can do the same thing with
simple equipment—plus a lot more
patience.
The image at right is not an easy
one to capture. Think of this as
inspiration. High-speed photography
of this sort requires patience,
and in this case a willingness to
do some cleaning up afterward!
Although it is possible to shoot
this without additional equipment,
we’d be relying on a lot of luck.
Motion 171