The latest pictures by high-speed photography fanatic Alan Sailer show him blowing up children's toys with firecrackers. In this image, an apple explodes on a doll's head. To blow up the objects Alan uses a firecracker modified so that it can be fired using an electrical signal. He then has to synchronise the opening of the camera shutter with the explosion...
...A Mr Potato Head explodes. Alan says: "The flash is the key, that and the detector/trigger. I use a home built flash based on a model built in the 1950s by Harold Edgerton. The flash is really fast about 1 millionth of a second and it stops the action. The detector/trigger is also critical. It detects that the debris from the explosion has arrived and fires the flash at just the right instant. Getting that right instant is the art and can take many tries."
Alan, from Camarillo, California, says: "The poor defenceless toys are common so I pick them up from garage sales. I try my best to keep the costs under a dollar per shot.
"I will admit that it is fun to mess with toy archetypes. I have to smile when an icon of sweet innocence like My Little Pony crumbles to pieces in rather horrifying way. My favourite image is the Zombie Pony. I only have one chance for many of my shots and it was great to get exactly the right moment of the explosion."
A Christmas bulb ornament
A Rubik's cube
A Polaroid camera
Portable cassette tape player
Mickey Mouse
A camera
Dora The Explorer mug
Toy train
A ball of yarn
Alan Sailer's set-up after explosion shots
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