New York-based photographer Christian Weber captures the beauty of explosions in this alluring collection of images. Using photography as a way to document the notion of energy and its fleeting phenomena, we see brilliant arrangements of light and smoke. It would’ve been easier for Weber to take these ethereal photographs with the aid of a laser or a sound trigger, but he instead chose to personally depress the shutter on his Canon 5D Mark III. This allowed him to still have a hand in the production of the images.
The inspiration for Weber’s photos came after he saw a picture of an atom’s shadow. He was intrigued by the idea of capturing something that’s all but invisible, and he wondered how he could replicate it with his own camera. “Explosions became my way of using photography to see what is usually unseen,” he says.
All of the explosions took place in a Connecticut rock quarry and were staged by pyrotechnicians. Nothing is being blown up; all of the flashes are just gunpowder and other explosives. And although it might appear like they occurred at night, these photos were actually shot during the middle of the day. The background is black because Weber had to expose for the explosion, which is much brighter than sunlight.
These photographs are the subject of Weber’s new book titled Explosions, which will be released at the end of September.
Christian Weber website
via [Photojojo and Wired]