Known as the man who made time stand still, Harold Edgerton is a scientist turned artist who photographs events that the human eye cannot register. With the help of his discoveries and inventions, he was able to reduce photographic exposure times to less than a millionth of a second. He achieved this feature by opening the camera's shutter in a darkened space, generating a flash of light to expose the film, and then closing the shutter. In other words, he played around with the “shutter speed”. Looking at Edgerton’s work, I find it hard to pinpoint one photograph that stands out to me more than the other. His work exemplifies the impossible - something which I hope to achieve in my work. I find it unbelievable that through his pictures, I am able to see things like: all the muscles and tendons of a boxer's arm stand out at the moment his fist hits the stationary punching bag or a popping balloon that has a wide-open gash yet remains tautly inflated. Moments which I can’t entirely visualize happening as they occur too fast, Edgerton has been able to capture them. Additionally, Edgerton’s photographs dramatize the issue that is displayed in the photograph by raising questions such as, “what’s going to happen next?” Despite being a photograph and an “action” shot, they seem to force the viewer to question and want more.

From the perspective of art, the appeal of Edgerton's images is in their perfectly composed lucidity and their surrealistic fusion of the factual and the