HDR Photography
As a child, I loved the “Incredible Cross Sections” books. In the Aviation Museum of Lexington, I came face-to-face with the real-life equivalent in this supercharger cutaway. I love the way the red paint shows which components have been cut away to reveal the interior.
In the era before digital (a.k.a. glass) cockpits, a face-full of instruments are the norm. As I constantly have to remind my students in lab classes, a machine is something that produces things (including movement) while instruments measure things.
The new Sony camera and its drastically improved signal:noise meant the opportunity to capture the Aviation Museum of Kentucky freed from the constraints of tripods.
Part of a series of works by Dan Flavin, featured in the National Gallery Salm Palace in Prague.
Displaying Andy Warhol’s correspondence in these hanging frames within a Prague museum makes a three-dimensional timeline of his life between two continents.
From the Aviation Museum of Kentucky, this AH-1 Cobra was fortuitously placed relative to the flag.
The early stages of flight produced such remarkably fragile vehicles; when placed against the jet fighters of later periods, aircraft like this one look like insects.
In a museum full of twentieth-century aircraft, this F-4 Phantom stood out for its enormous size.
When I think about experimental vehicles, I tend to think of hypermodern materials: carbon fiber composites and titanium alloys. This experimental seaplane at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky, on the other hand, gets some serious mileage out of wood.
With the move to online classes, the availability of a cool Zoom background has become paramount. This jet engine has become my new go-to.
My favorite aspect of visiting aviation museums as a kid was an opportunity to sit in decommissioned aircraft and work the controls. It turns out that’s still fun as an adult.
In this image, visitors walk through “Demon of the Growth” in Salm Palace, part of the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic. Though this sculpture may look enormous, this portion on the staircase is only a small part of the multistory piece that extends painted spheres (mostly balls for athletics, as far as I could tell) around the museum and even out some of the windows. I’m put in mind most of some kind of gray goo scenario, with out-of-control self-replicating machines on the loose in the museum.
Standing behind the F-14 Tomcat at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky, the brain has a tough time comprehending just how enormous the nozzles on the hot side of the jet engines really are.20
The sleek shape of the Cobra made it my favorite helicopter as a kid. (Every kid has a favorite helicopter… right?) A contrast is revealed with the maintenance panels opened and the complicated mechanical components of the powerplant on display.
Though the difference in color temperature between sunlight and indoor lighting may be intuitively understood common knowledge, I’ve rarely seen a picture that so dramatically illustrates the color contrast.
Decaseconds 