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Science, Art & Photography, Part 1:
The Camera As A Microscope of Time

In the modern world, the camera has become our eyes. We can see things that we would and could not have seen without the camera. See examples of this in my related article of scientific photos:
GALLERY: The Long Reach Of Photography: From The Edge Of The Universe To Subatomic Particles

Yet there remains an area of photography that is still unexplored. That is the area of slow shutter speed photography or long exposure photography. Admittedly this is much harder to control than fast shutter speed, sharp photography. But that makes it all the more exciting.

The majority of my book, Experimental Digital Photography, explains how long exposure photography can be used to create new and exciting photographic imagery which is both realistic and expressive.

QUOTES FROM MY BOOK EXPERIMENTAL DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY:

Why Motion and Slow Shutter Speed Effects Have Been Ignored
Motion photography was quite difficult and expensive before the advent of digital photography. Consequently very little work was done in this area. Still photographs of motion with film cameras were almost impossible without the immediate feedback of the LCD monitor to accurately judge the subtle effects of different shutter speeds with different types of motion under different lighting conditions. As a result traditional photography virtually ignored motion even to the point of labeling photos, that deliberating used blur, flawed photographs.
Thus photography, for the most part, has been restricted to shutter speeds above 1/30 second unless the camera was anchored to a tripod and the subject was not moving.

There Is Much To Be Discovered
However, below 1/30 of a second there is another world – a world that photography has not studied in much depth. And since there are few photos with this subject matter, it is a rich area for exploration.

Revealing Hidden Worlds With Slow Shutter Speed Photography
The phrase 'exploring new worlds' with digital photography is more than just a metaphor. Experimental digital photography that utilizes slow shutter speeds has the ability to show worlds that have not been seen before, in a manner similar to high speed photography, but at the other end of the spectrum.
High speed photos revealed a world entirely different than the one most people took for granted. For example, when Eadweard Muybridge took a series of high speed photographs of a horse trotting, he proved that all four legs left the ground and revealed what horse riders and trainers and spectators had not been able to see properly. "One thing was very clear from Muybridge’s pictures: No painter had ever gotten the position of a horse’s legs correctly. In fact, many contemporary painters disputed his findings when they were first announced as it meant that their paintings were all incorrect." (equineink.wordpress.com)
In the same manner slow shutter speed photography can show us rhythms, energy and a sense of time that we could not see otherwise. See my related series of 5 articles about this:
Visual Art & Digital Photography

In the ten photographs in this article I will illustrate how the camera can operate as a microscope of time. You might think of the shutter speed as slicing an area of time. The slices can be very thin as in the photo above of a bullet going through a glass bulb or the slice can be very thick as in the photo below of water running over rocks. Slow shutter speeds can create an almost mesmerizing effect such as the soft foamy appearance of the water below. This photo has a very different feel than it would have had at normal or very fast shutter speed.

The artist "lives at a time of great scientific and technological breakthroughs. These discoveries uncover new frontiers of perception and offer new representations of the world. Access to what was until then invisible becomes possible."
Paul Klee, painter

All uncredited work is copyright by Richard (Rick) deGaris Doble 2011.

NOTE: See a list of my other articles here at PIXIQ. www.pixiq.com/contributors/rick-doble

For more about my approach to photography see my book: Experimental Digital Photography.

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