stroboscope

The stroboscope is a special camera that I built to capture motion.  I was inspired to play with stroboscopic photography after seeing photographs taken by the French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey. In the 1880s, Marey invented a camera with a rotating shutter that could capture multiple images on a single photographic plate. He used this camera to study locomotion in humans, animals, birds, sea creatures, and insects.

Marey used clockwork mechanisms and photographic plates for his contraption, while mine uses an electric motor and a digital camera. The camera is set to take long exposures while a slotted disk spins in front of its lens. Each time the slot spins past the lens, the camera gets a glimpse of your subject and adds another layer to the image. The resulting photograph is a record of your subject moving through space and time, and these images often reveal beautiful patterns that would otherwise be invisible to us.

The stroboscope is currently on display at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where you can try it out for yourself. I also wrote an article for MAKE magazine with instructions for building one of your own. 

Build your own Stroboscope