I’m very sure he used a high speed projectile to bust the vases and cassette players. Possibly even a bullet. It would have to be something extremely high speed to cause such a violent explosion. If he used a gun, it’s possible he just synced up the trigger with the shutter release with strings or something.

I’m not sure about the porcelain figures though, those don’t look like they were busted with a bullet…I read an article somewhere else on the web which said those images were mostly left to chance.

OH, and by the way…he used a large format camera for those shots. The prints are huge. He doesn’t do any of those 5-10 sequential shots and hope for the perfect image in one of them…with large format cameras you’re given one sheet of film and you have to reload after each shot…so you only have one go at it. Much respect.

Upon reflection, I don’t think there needs to be synch between anything but the shutter and the strobe. You just have to use the shutter drive and take a bunch of images in rapid succession. My 20D can only make 5 frames per second, but the new EOS-1D Mark III can make 10 frames per second with a maximum burst of 110 frames (!!) which would make this kind of shot child’s play.