Icarus Also Flew

Meagan

Over the years I've gotten to work with some very talented and beautiful models, however my shoots with Meagan reached a level of collaboration and synergy that a photographer can usually only hope for. Perhaps it was because she is a talented photographer in her own right, or perhaps because she lives with a candidness and sense of adventure rarely found in this society, or perhaps something else entirely. Who can really explain this alchemy anyway? At my best I can only present evidence that these elements: water, air, flesh, electrons, and the briefest light were momentarily transformed into something else. And that something else is what I submit for your consideration. 

Meagan (a preview)

I don't have words for this right now, and anyway, that's not really my job.

on silence

"But then again I think that if we had more silence, if we were more silent, perhaps we might be able to understand something." -Fellini

Variations

more Mythologies

I can't say a lot about this series yet, except that its one of the most elusive and challenging projects I've worked on. The photos come like apparitions, always pulling me in drastically different directions than I planned on going.

Also, I should say that I'm very grateful for this model's collaboration. She is unassuming and yet in every shoot we've done together she delivers a deep and honest presence. She ultimately makes these photos what they are, and much more than I what I originally imagined.

Identified Flying Objects

STS-133 or The Relative Merits of Ceramic over Wax (1/3)

for Amber Weiss

STS-133 or The Relative Merits of Ceramic over Wax (2/3)

I’d like to say I’ve been a “space geek” since I was a little kid, but I wasn’t. Astronaut was never on my “when I grow up” occupations list. I didn’t attend space camp (too expensive), and have never had astronaut ice cream (I suspect it doesn’t really compare to a good gelato). Now, it is the one thing I would like to experience more than anything else. 

It took me a while to figure it out, but I realized I wanted I wanted to photograph a Space Shuttle launch before the program is terminated this summer. This experience had a profound impact on me. While I think the photos below are cool, they fail to describe the experience of being there. In my defense, so does every other photo I’ve ever seen of it. I’m also certain to fail describing it in words. On one hand it is a incredibly graceful event (or at least as graceful as 6.7 million pounds of thrust propelling the weight of 12 semi-trucks into space can be. On the other hand seeing the Shuttle and previous rockets up close, it becomes apparent just how crude these attempts are. Patches of assorted metals, ceramic bricks, pipes, wires, and millions of gallons of the most flammable stuff we can fill up with comprise these bold adventures into an incomprehensibly vast expanse. While it isn’t the picture the PR department at NASA might want to paint, I think it makes the fact that we so often succeed even more amazing. 

With that, I leave you to enjoy these, my attempts, to depict an event that has become so common place that we are want to forget how just how miraculous it is. 

On another note, if you want to order some of these prints you can do so here. While an official fine-art print program is being finalized, I wanted to make these available due to the number of requests for them.

I would like to thank Paul at LensProToGo who (as usual) provided amazing service and gear that would be far too expensive for me to own that made these photos possible. 

For those of you craving technical details. With the exception of the first image, all of these photographs were shot with a Nikon D2x with a 600mm f4 lens (effectively 900mm) or a D3s and the 70-200 and a TC-20 III (effectively 400mm) from NASA causeway. 

 

STS-133 or The Relative Merits of Ceramic over Wax (3/3)

aerials

Sometime in the winter of 2010, I was returning to a snow-covered Chicago (undoubtedly from somewhere much warmer). I've always enjoyed how different our familiar world looks from above (I have been known to spend an inordanite amount of time browsing Google Earth). But this time I was taken aback by the beauty of the snow covered forest preserves surrounding O'Hare Airport. Unfortunately for me, the pilot decided that it was more important to get the 150+ passengers on the ground than to give me more time to photograph the landscape, but I knew I had to return to it. A year later, right after the great blizzard of 2011, I hired a helicopter to take me up and shoot that beautifully pure and abstract landscape.