Sunday, August 1, 2010

173 - Chicken Spun


Who knew that stuffed toy chickens could get dirty?  These are the same chickens that sit in our living room and watch TV day after day (please cluck click here to see more).  We decided to wash them.  We used washing machine to spin out the excess water, and dried them on the clothesline. 
I took the opportunity to use my camera's high speed shutter to capture the birds in flight.  I wanted to see if the drum spinner was anything like an amusement park ride for the chickens.  This picture was taken in 1/1000 of a second, and it shows all of the detail.

It's amazing to think that there are 1000 of these images in a second.  We humans can visually process only around 30 images a second, although some people are sensitive to slightly higher rates.  The limit is the speed of our neurotransmitters, which is around 25 meters per second.  By comparison, the speed of sound at ocean level is 340 m/s. 

The process of life has us filter out millions upon millions of these excess moments in time.  However, there are always a few in our lives that will rank as supremely important: birth, death, the impulse to say "I do", the instant of realization that you have enough money to buy some cool art, the moment the shutter snaps on a fancy camera, things like that.