rit

How to Photograph Flowers Splashing in Milk with an Infrared Laser

We came up for the idea to do this shoot when we saw someone on Instagram who was dropping flowers into milk and just manually trying to get the timing right. Although they were able to get nice photos of the splash some of the time, they would miss the splash just as often as they were able to capture it. We knew we could build a rig that let us capture the perfect flower splash moment every single time. In all, we took about 70 photos and successfully captured the splash every time.

How to Photograph Mysterious Floating Scrabble Letters

This past month, a student showed me an Instagram post with floating scrabble letters and asked me how it was done. After a few moments of reflection, I decided there was a number of ways to photograph floating letters and it would be a great idea for a student lab. To explore different techniques would be a great lab. The students evaluated the techniques to see which was best for creating floating letters.

A Film Panorama of Kodak Park with a Medium Format Camera Drone

As Eastman Kodak Company transforms its legendary manufacturing complex, once devoted exclusively to the production of photographic equipment and materials, the management of the Eastman Business Park reached out to me (Professor Frank Cost at RIT) to involve students in learning opportunities centered in a new customer-education and workforce development center planned for the Park.

How to Build a Simple Sound Trigger for High-Speed Photos With Arduino

Are you stressed? What better way to de-stress is there than to break things while making cool photographs at the same time? You can break anything, from spaghetti to fancy glassware, there is no limit. It will take you about half an hour to build the Arduino circuit and write the code for this sound triggering photographic system.

This Custom Instant Camera Drone Drops Photos from the Sky

A student at the Rochester Institute of Technology had a creative idea for his Visual Media Innovation Project this past semester: he created the first (to our knowledge) instant camera drone by hacking a Fuji Instax Mini 8 camera onto a DJI Flamewheel f450 drone kit.

This Machine Prints Photos with Drops of Coffee

The Coffee Drip Printer is a curious contraption created by RIT photography professor Ted Kinsman. It can print out your digital photos, but instead of buying pricey ink for the prints, all you need to do is give the machine some coffee.

Photographing a Racetrack at Night with the Help of 1,800 Light Painters

Since 1987, the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has done an annual nighttime community photo project called RIT Big Shot. For the the 31st event held this past weekend on October 3rd, the school set out to create a photo of the Churchhill Downs that shows the iconic Kentucky Derby track at night.

How do you go about lighting a giant racetrack at night? Well, RIT enlisted the help of 1,800 volunteers to help light paint the scene. All external lighting was provided by the volunteers using flashlights, electronic flash units, and some high-end strobes.

Drone Captures Wet Plate Camera, and Vice Versa

Last week, RIT photography professor Willie Osterman held the 2015 RIT Photo MFA picnic in the front yard of his home in Bristol, New York. To commemorate the gathering, he pulled out a giant camera to shoot a wet plate collodion ambrotype portrait of the group.

On the other side of the camera, in the group, was fellow photo professor Frank Cost with a DJI Inspire camera drone. Cost used the drone to capture the wet plate shooting process from a subject's point of view before lifting off into the sky for a bird's-eye view. The drone was also captured in the resulting wet plate from the last portrait attempt.