The Beauty of Discovery

VISUAL: The beauty of discovery. It’s been over three decades since Phred Petersen began combining his passions for photography and science. But the award?winning scientific photographer remains driven by a relentless curiosity. RMIT University logo.

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking to camera.

Phred Petersen: Photography's actually a second career for me. I was originally a research chemist and I got interested in photography sort of as a hobby and realised that there had to be some way to bring science and photography together.

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking side-on to camera.

Phred Petersen: I saw it as a way to feed my curiosity about the world around me, about what happens.

VISUAL: Black and white video close?up of slow motion of model helicopter rotors turning and air movement around the helicopter. Title at top of screen: High?speed video showing circulation of air when rotors on a model helicopter are started.

Phred Petersen: My research interests are aligned pretty much with the engineering and material sciences fields, wherein, it's about photography as a tool to collect some form of data that would be very difficult for us to collect any other way. We may be trying to ...

VISUAL: Video close?up of the slow motion model helicopter as it lifts off and hovers just above the flat surface.

Phred Petersen: ... look at something in a qualitative sense, purely visually, or we may be actually using the camera to let us get some quantitative information because ...

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking to camera.

Phred Petersen: ... with most of the high speed cameras now, for example, there's an integrated measurement package so you can calculate things like speeds and accelerations and angles and things like that.

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking side?on to camera.

Phred Petersen: But very often the image is actually used as a complementary source of data for quantitative data.

VISUAL: Video close?up of a locust flying through the air against a black background. At the top of the screen is the title: Understanding how locusts maintain stable flight in turbulent airflow can help improve the performance of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs).

Phred Petersen: The set up times for things like this can vary. I could probably spend much more time on any of them than I ever have at this point.

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking to camera.

Phred Petersen: But typically, for an event that's going to be over in just a few thousandths of a second, I will spend, at least, half a day to a day setting it up ...

VISUAL: Video in slow motion of close-up of a bubble (in black and white) floating down the screen. A finger moves from the left of screen towards the bubble and breaks the bubble’s membrane (ie pops it). The bubble then disintegrates from left to right.

Phred Petersen: ... because it's all about getting the timing and the synchronisation of everything right. When the event is over very quickly you've got an extremely ...

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking side?on to camera.

Phred Petersen: ... small window of time to actually capture it and make sure that the lights are on at the right time, the camera's ready, all that stuff is happening properly and ...

VISUAL: Black and white photograph of a popped balloon with soundwaves circulating out from the popped balloon in the centre. Title at the top of screen: The sound of a balloon popping. Moving at around Mach 1, the high pressure spherical wavefront bends light rays away from their normal line of transit.

Phred Petersen: ... that you've actually got the right stage of the event. I've often told people that high speed photography is about method, moment and duration.

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking to camera.

Phred Petersen: It's how you look, it's when you look and it's for how long you look because if any of those are wrong, you're going to see nothing.

VISUAL: Time?lapse video of Phred Petersen setting up his studio for a scientific photograph – placing lights, testing light, moving camera on tripod, plugging in computer and looking at image on screen.

Phred Petersen: So for the Liquid Lace photograph, I probably spent in total about two days working on that one photograph ...

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking side?on to camera.

Phred Petersen: ... between the set up and the fine tuning and the refining to get just the right moment in making that happen.

VISUAL: Close?up of colour photograph of Liquid Lace image, camera pans down from top to bottom of image. The background is a bright blue and the liquid that has formed into a lace-like bowl shape is varying shades of iridescent yellow and orange. The base of the bowl shape where it touches the alcohol on the flat surface is iridescent green. At the top of the screen is the title: Highly commended, 2013 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Science Photography.

Phred Petersen: The Liquid Lace image was created by dropping a drop of a glycerine/water mixture into a thin film of alcohol on a flat surface.

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking to camera.

Phred Petersen: And what you're seeing there, the lace pattern is formed due to the differences in surface tension of those two liquids and as they mix ...

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking side?on to camera.

Phred Petersen: ... the liquid with the higher surface tension will tend to pull the other liquid away and to then form the holes that then form the lace pattern.

VISUAL: Video of Phred Petersen moving a light in studio to set up for a photographic shot as seen in the earlier time?lapse video.

Phred Petersen: The way in which that happens is actually used to ensure good clean drying of ...

VISUAL: Video close?up of Phred Petersen in studio adjusting photographic equipment to set up for the same photographic shot.

Phred Petersen: ... wafers in IC manufacture where dirt is an incredibly big problem ...

VISUAL: Video close?up of Phred Petersen in same studio looking through his camera at object on a display table that he is photographing.

Phred Petersen: ... and this Marangoni effect can actually ...

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking to camera.

Phred Petersen: ... help with making sure that they're dried in a very clean manner. It's also the same thing that causes the tears on the side of a wine glass, if you've ever observed that when you're looking at wine.

VISUAL: Video of five sequential black and white photographs from left to right showing stages of an upside?down plastic drink bottle expelling air from its spout. At the top of the screen is the title: Sequence showing the liftoff of a pressurised PET drink bottle from a rocket launcher filled with CO2.

Phred Petersen: The value of imagery, in any field, as a communication tool is that it speaks so quickly to people. If I draw on the experience I've had with my research colleagues ...

VISUAL: Black and white video close?up of smoke passing around a shuttlecock. The shuttlecock is on a metal stand at zero degrees, side?on to camera and its top is pointing to the left of the screen. The smoke is moving across the screen from left to right and is swirling in the eddy created at the base of the shuttlecock, to the right of the screen. At the top of the screen is the title: Smoke highlighting the ambient airflow around a shuttlecock at different angles.

Phred Petersen: ... I had one of them say, I could sit down and go through pages and pages of data on this ...

VISUAL: As per the previous visual image, black and white video close up of smoke passing around a shuttlecock. The shuttlecock is on the metal stand – side-on to camera but the metal stand has lifted up 45 degrees thus the shuttlecock has moved slightly with its top now pointing to the left top corner of the screen. The smoke is moving across the screen from left to right and is swirling in the eddy created at the top side and at the base of the shuttlecock, to the right of the screen.

Phred Petersen: ... but you showed me five seconds of video and I understood what was happening. And I think that you can really get things across very, very quickly to ...

VISUAL: Phred Petersen sitting in his laboratory speaking side?on to camera.

Phred Petersen: ... a very diverse, very mixed audience of backgrounds, of interests and I think sometimes the challenge is to actually ...

VISUAL: Colour photograph of close?up of toy rocket in a vertical position. A small explosion cloud is at the base of the toy rocket. The blast waves are circulating out from the toy rocket. At the top of the screen is the title: Blast wave traveling at the speed of sound caused by the explosion of a toy rocket.

Phred Petersen: ... cross that Art/Science boundary a little bit ...

VISUAL: The same colour photograph of close?up of toy rocket in a vertical position as per previous visual image. A small explosion cloud is at the base of the toy rocket. The blast waves are circulating out from the toy rocket. At the top of the screen the title changes to: Winner of the 2008 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Science Photography.

Phred Petersen: ... and try to create something that people want to look at long enough to actually, now start to understand it.

VISUAL: RMIT University’s logo and website www.rmit.edu.au.

End of video

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