However you want to read into it, there's something immensely satisfying about watching stuff blow up. Californian engineer/amateur photographer Alan Sailer understands this implicitly.

Fruit, rubber bands, sea urchin shells, Christmas decorations... no inanimate object escapes the wrath of Alan, his garage studio, his pellet gun and his home-built microsecond flash. Caught at the moment of explosion, the object takes on a completely different identity.

Though it's an undeniably violent act, the images feel somehow gentle and celebratory, homage to the energy contained within every single object on the earth. Either that, or they're simply cool photos of stuff blowing up. And what's wrong with that?