Stopping time: photography by high-speed pioneer Harold Egerton

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Many have seen on the Internet photographs of frozen water droplets, exploding light bulbs, or how a bullet passes through various objects. However, none of this would have happened if not for the experiments of Harold Edgerton. He was born at the beginning of the last century, but his contribution to high-speed photography is enormous. Edgerton's techniques are used by modern photographers, including for shooting advertising photography.

Harold Edgerton was born on April 6, 1903 in the small American town of Fremont (Nebraska) in the family of the famous lawyer, journalist and orator Richard Edgerton. Harold spent his childhood in Aurora, for some time he lived in Washington and Lincoln (Nebraska). In 1925 he successfully graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a BA in Electrical Engineering. Two years later, Edgerton received his MS in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even while studying at the institute, Edgerton became interested in motors and flashes. He noticed that if you illuminate an object with short bursts of light, it will appear frozen. This discovery formed the basis for his future scientific research.

In 1937, he met the photographer Gien Mili, who widely used stroboscopic equipment in his work (it is used to observe rapid periodic movements), in particular, special electrical flashes were used that could fire 120 times per second. Edgerton pioneered the use of short flashes when photographing moving objects, and it is thanks to him that strobe lights are now present in many cameras. The electrical flash also came from Edgerton. His famous "A Drop of Milk", The Bullet Cutting Through the Map "and other photographs became examples for imitation and repeated copying not only for his colleagues - contemporaries, but also for photographers who create today.

Subsequently, Edgerton became a professor of electrical engineering at his alma mater - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the postgraduate student dormitories of the institute now bears his name. Students who were lucky enough to study with the master always spoke warmly about him - they loved the master for his kindness and openness. “If you want to share your knowledge with someone,” Edgerton used to say, “it’s important to do it so that the person doesn’t realize that he’s learning until it’s too late.”

In 1934 he was awarded the Bronze Medal of the Royal Photographic Society, and in 1973 he received the National Medal of Science. Edgerton was always quite indifferent to praise, and when he was called an artist, he expressed obvious discontent: "I am not an artist, I am only interested in facts."