By day, Alan Sailer is an electrical engineer. By night, the 54-year-old shoots roses, bacon and lollipops with a pellet gun in his garage. He takes photos of the objects as the pellet hits them in a darkened room. “The flash shoots at a millionth of a second,” he tells Metro. “To capture the picture I have one second.”
Sailer has now had over a million hits on his Flickr page. “But I already have a job,” he says. “I don’t want to become a professional photographer. More money would just mean more stuff around the house.” If people insist, he charges a nominal fee, which he donates to a local college.
Besides the pellet guns he uses in his work, another occupational hazard is the studio lights he works with. “I usually need 4-5 shots for each photo. But the real challenge is working with 17,000 volt equipment,” he says. Each flash of his lights lasts just 0.5 microseconds. By comparison, a regular camera flash lasts 10,000 times longer.
See more of Sailer’s photos online.
Sailer’s victims
Other objects that Sailer has shot:
• Bacon slices
•
Lettuce (“Sometimes I think I’d like to include them. But I’ve
promised myself to never shoot anything that’s alive,” he says of the
snails that eat his lettuce)
• Christmas bulbs — sometimes filled with water
• Nuts
• Tomatoes
• Paintball balls
• Crayons
• Dolls
• Cheese
