I'm pretty good at creating software, but for me it's a very different story when it comes to electronics and mechanics, so it was with great awe that I read one man's attempt to photograph insects in flight.

His saga has 10 pages, starting out with a laser sensor he built to trigger the camera when a bug is in the right spot, and includes taking apart a 1950s mechanical shutter, finding a way to open and close the shutter with electromagnets 20x faster than his modern digital SLR camera's shutter lag, and, well, a lot of smarts. He even mills his own lens adaptor rings from a block of aluminum. It's a great story of ingenuity and perseverance.

Elsewhere on his site he has a lot of very interesting high-speed photography, such as a sequence of a bullet piercing a soap bubble. The images are interesting, but the descriptions of how he was able to take them are even more so.

What a smart, cool guy.