Filming insects and birds

On 6th March, we were treated some fascinating insights into the scientific (rather than the usual artistic) uses of photography. Dr Richard Bomphrey from the Royal Veterinary College presented a talk on “Filming insects and birds: videography as a starting point for science and technology”.

Mainly using high speed cameras to capture motion, but then applying some pretty serious mathematical modelling, Richard and his colleagues are able to study the wing motions of insects and birds, in order to understand different aspects of the subject such as efficiency, speed, landing and take off. The knowledge of this is useful not only in the understanding of the animal kingdom, but also has potential applications to human flight.

Some of the highlights for me were :
A video showing how dragonfly wings beat alternately front and rear, except at the point of take off.
Images and videos showing the square of vortices around insects and planes.
Insight into some of the simple sounding but clever techniques for capturing the required information.

And of course playing with the high speed camera and some party poppers!