Liquid Sculpture and Strobe Alley

Liquid Sculpture is the web site of photographer Mark Waugh, featuring his pictures of liquid droplets at the moment of impact. The photo at right is of colored water, but his collection includes various colored and viscous fluids as they form frozen fountains, coronets, and other sculptures.

Waugh's work reminds me of the first such photo I ever saw. When my elder brother went off to MIT, he sent back a postcard of a coronet of milk--amazingly frozen in time against a red background (1957). It was the work of MIT's Institute Professor Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton. An earlier Edgerton picture of a splashing milk drop was so beautiful that it was featured in the New York Museum of Modern Art's first photography exhibit (1937). More images included athletes frozen in competition; bullets piercing balloons, apples, and playingcards; and hummingbirds in mid-flight.

Such images may seem common today, but they were a miracle in the 1930s when Edgerton invented the stroboscope which was used to create ultra-high-speed and still (or stop-motion) photography.

Interesting links:

• Flashes of Inspiration: The Work of Harold Edgerton, MIT Museum
  
• Exploring Photography : Photographers : Harold Edgerton, Victoria & Albert Museum
  
• A Biographical Memoir (PDF) by J. Kim VanDiver and Pagan Kennedy, published by the National Academy of Sciences