Harold Edgerton at MIT – Strobe of a girl skipping
Toronto. George Dunbar sent me this fascinating link to a short video on the TIME MAGAZINE website showing Edgerton’s high speed photography experiments using custom made strobes. Wait for the video – it starts after a short ad.
Dr Edgerton set up various arrangements to record everyday things in a way we do not see them. His high speed electronic flash (strobe) allows recording of incidents a fraction of a second long. For example he recorded fifty images of a tennis swing on a single print using a large plate film camera and a custom made strobe. He created a high speed movie camera capable of taking 6,000 frames a second to record some of his experiments.
The stills and movies record everyday activities in a fresh new light – now over a half century old (dating back to c1930 at MIT)! Dr Edgerton insisted he was an engineer, not an artist but today, his high speed photography prints sit in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), a respected New York Museum. Look at this thought provoking video capturing the great man and his images in action.
