The Blog

Occasional news and project updates

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July 28, 2017

Going to Church, Photographing LAX

July 28, 2017

Beauty is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Los Angeles International Airport. Most often the first word you’re going to think of is explicit, four letters long, and is immediately followed by the mental gymnastics that one must perform when they figure out the optimal time to leave in order to beat 405 traffic while not getting stuck in 10 traffic but at the same time approaching the airport so as to dodge Century Blvd traffic. Need I mention the loop, or the low-roofed ceilings, or overpriced airport food (hey, it’s getting better!), jammed TSA lines, etc. It’s an airport we love to hate, but ever since moving to Los Angeles I’ve made a near-weekly trip out to photograph it.

July 28, 2017

October 17, 2016

The Making of Airportraits: Chasing Planes Around The World

October 17, 2016

I just spent nearly two years of my life photographing airplanes and airports.

It wasn’t two years straight with no interruption, but it did occupy a good deal of my waking hours. Even if I wasn’t photographing airports or airplanes, I was planning how I was going to photograph them, making arrangements to photograph them, or staying up until 3am tracking airplane movements and wind patterns.

In March of 2014, I created the first image of this series, Wake Turbulence, which depicted an entire day’s worth of aircraft movements at LAX composited into a single image. The resulting work was plastered all over the internet, was named one of the top images of 2014, and even ended up on a Gestalten book cover which is now in museums and bookstores all over the world.

October 17, 2016

October 7, 2016

Eyes Aloft: The Sublimity of Plane Spotting" Published in Virgina Quarterly Review

October 7, 2016

Over the past couple of years I’ve been working to photograph airports all over the world, and a large part of that project involves photographing aviation enthusiasts who line the edges of runways with their cameras pointed skyward. Known as planespotters, these enthusiasts have actually played a very interesting part in our world economy, exposing movements of some of the most elusive figures and celebrities by uploading images of their private aircraft to the web for all to see. I was lucky enough to be chosen to illustrate VQR’s story about this interesting and relatively under-the-radar hobby. Images from Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Zurich were included in the article. See some of those images below and be sure to check out the full article in VQR!

October 7, 2016