Christmas is over, and the new year will be a blast. Combine to the two and you may get something like Alan Sailer’s photo series. We all know photo’s of blowing stuff up, and Alan Sailer has timed it perfectly when blowing up Christmas ornaments. He found a flickr stream of Jasper Nance that explained how to make a microsecond-flash. Alan built it, used it, and found that the photo’s would look better with more color in them. For the background he choose contrasting colors using colored foam plastic sheets that he could reuse by washing them. Also inspired by Jasper’s photo’s (where he used juice inside some objects), Alan decided using gelatin would work better than juice because it hardens more. The harder gelatin would capture the shockwave of the explosive inside better than juice, making the gelatin spread evenly in all directions. This way the cracking of the objects from the inside out would be captured better. Using red gelatin would help attract attention, having the color of blood. To Alan its a cheap emotional trick, but it works! He’s tried using clear gelatin to get the firecracker light, but with less results. Using complementary colors that contrast well for the gelatin, ornament and background made for a much better photo that’s more fun to look at. The contrasting colors suit the violence of the explosion well. All quite simple really. Keep it simple, and play with it!
