Frozen Moments - High Speed Art

July 22, 2007 6:51 PM

Photographer Martin Klimas specializes in capturing high speed photography, but with a more artistic aesthetic than the usual "bullet through an orange", etc.
posted by jonson (26 comments total)

Bullet through object is pretty much the "Will it Blend?" of photography.
posted by Orrorin at 7:02 PM on July 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

The shot of the soap bubbles is fascinating. It looks like a vector image.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 7:07 PM on July 22, 2007

I thought it was pretty standard stuff 'til I got to the fracturing Kung-Fu figures. Those are genius.
posted by lekvar at 7:10 PM on July 22, 2007

I thought it was pretty standard stuff 'til I got to the fracturing Kung-Fu figures. Those are genius.

I agree. Also, the flash interface sucks.
posted by delmoi at 7:16 PM on July 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wow, so you didn't like the owls? Or the deck of cards? Those were my favorites. But I liked the kung fu figurines as well.
posted by jonson at 7:18 PM on July 22, 2007

What is it with photographers and sucky UI?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:28 PM on July 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

i liked it all, but the kung fu statuettes were special
posted by pyramid termite at 7:31 PM on July 22, 2007

Super-f'ing-cool! The birds were awesome but the kung-fu figurines were genius!
posted by photoslob at 7:33 PM on July 22, 2007

The birds were amazing... Any idea on how he captured those pictures?

Also, can those tennis shooter machines really shoot a ball fast enough to shatter glass like that?
posted by spiderskull at 7:49 PM on July 22, 2007

The birds were great, and the first set of thumbnails seemed good but I couldn't be arsed to work through the shitty interface to see them all. Maybe later. Good stuff.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 7:50 PM on July 22, 2007

All hail Harold "Doc" Edgerton !
posted by ericb at 7:59 PM on July 22, 2007

Ditto on the kung fu figures. The shattered glass of wine was pretty spectacular as well.
posted by Zinger at 8:01 PM on July 22, 2007

Previous "high speed photography" threads here on MetaFilter -- 1, 2 and 3.
posted by ericb at 8:02 PM on July 22, 2007

What is it with photographers and sucky UI?

I'm wondering how much of the use of this kind of UI is so you aren't able to right click and copy the pix?
posted by Zinger at 8:02 PM on July 22, 2007

I've seen the figurines in another post, I think, but still cool.
posted by Mid at 8:07 PM on July 22, 2007

Thanks for the post. One of the Kung-Fu images was in Harper's last month and it's great to see more of his work.
posted by Staggering Jack at 8:29 PM on July 22, 2007

Yes, those are certainly among the least interesting photographs I have ever seen. Thanks!
posted by unSane at 8:35 PM on July 22, 2007

I liked the wine glass, but I too got tired of fiddling with the interface.

Flash is often used on photography sites to protect images a bit from download. But that doesn't mean the interface has to be lacking in direction and intuition. If anything you have a lot more options in Flash to guide users through.

Why force you users to click open on a thumbnail and then click on it or an arrow to go back to the thumbnails? Why not have an easily seeable arrow to just click through the bigger sizes? Why force users to treat it all like some old school only being able to open a new browser window to see a new image?

It just results in people abandoning viewing your work, there is a big difference between wanting a clean interface to let viewers focus on images and just leaving them hanging wondering how to navigate properly with little control or direction.

< / preaching to the converted>
posted by gomichild at 8:50 PM on July 22, 2007

Yeah. Never got the whole "preventing people from downloading" thing on photographers sites, since the "big" sizes they offer are usually only 640 x 480 resolution anyway, and no fool is going to try and download that and turn it into a wall poster to sell, now, are they? And if you wanted to do something shocking and illegal like set them as your desktop wallpaper...well, Print Screen + Paste into Windows Paint is all you need to do. But hey, it's a free web.

Anyway, I liked the one with the dropping marbles, mainly because it somehow looked ray traced - you could probably create precisely the same image in POVRAY if you wanted, but it's somehow so much cooler coming from a camera.
posted by Jimbob at 9:17 PM on July 22, 2007

Love the figurines. (Oh, and: here's a music video to go with that.)
posted by progosk at 10:46 PM on July 22, 2007

Yes, the figurines are fantastic. Something about the last moments of something carefully handpainted.
posted by effugas at 11:28 PM on July 22, 2007

What is it with photographers and sucky UI?

Hey, we're not all like that.

My portfolio site uses a simple javascript navigation system instead of the hated flash.
posted by bwg at 11:38 PM on July 22, 2007

Actually if you click on the pictures (the thumbnails) while one is large, it just shrinks the current one and enlarges the one you clicked on. At least that is how it worked for me and to shrink the one you are looking at you click it again. So I guess this interface was pretty easy for me to use. Could've been more explicit, but it was straightforward for me in particular. not saying I'm better, just that it did work fine for someone.
posted by Phantomx at 12:03 AM on July 23, 2007

A lot of those shots have been replicated elsewhere... but the last set was cool.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:59 AM on July 23, 2007

Very cool. One of the photos makes me want to listen to Rush's Fly By Night
posted by NoMich at 5:22 AM on July 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Hm. And here I enjoyed seeing something that didn't have rounded edges and dropshadows everywhere.

The shattering cassette player caught my eye. Not entirely sure why. ... My, those are fly.

</badrhyme>
posted by ikebowen at 10:08 AM on July 23, 2007