Beauty is where you find it.

I do a fair amount of industrial photography. While not glamorous, it can certainly be challenging and fun. Often it’s photographing CNC machines and machining pods and other tools used to make stuff. Sometimes the equipment must be lit to make it look as good as possible. Other times, available light is really best.

Once in while I get to shoot some pretty cool technology. Last week, I got to shoot a laser cutter. It’s truly amazing to watch a beam of light cut thru a half inch piece of stainless steel. It’s also tough to photograph. The problem is that you want to see sparks that are generated from the laser and to do that, you need to use a slow shutter speed. The problem is that the laser’s cutting head is constantly moving (which causes it to blur just like the sparks). The trick is to be able to pan with the cutting head’s movement and to time the shot just right. Below is one of favorite shots from that shoot.

Laser Cutter

Well that’s it for this week. Next week I’ll post another composite image I’ve been working on. Thanks for reading!

-Ken