Photographer Spotlight: Ben Cooper

**cancidas** · 2009-10-12, 03:52 PM

i saw these pix on a.net and just wanted to share them all with you. they're excellent examples of aviation photography, taken by Ben Cooper down at the Kennedy Space Center:

**Matt Molnar** · 2009-10-12, 04:30 PM

Not only are those great exposures, the guy must be a little bit nuts. From some of those vantage points, if something goes wrong on the ground or right after lift off, he's toast.

**moose135** · 2009-10-12, 04:34 PM

A lot of that "up close" photography is done using remote cameras - I read a description written by someone on the SmugMug forum about it a while back. He sets up the camera a day or two before the launch, on a tripod in a weather-resistant housing. He has a home-made set up to wake up the camera and a sound-activated shutter release. As I remember, he did have one camera damaged when a rocket blew up - after NASA made a copy of his images for their investigation, the CF card was returned to him.

**Matt Molnar** · 2009-10-12, 04:48 PM

Ahh, well that makes more sense.

**T-Bird76** · 2009-10-12, 10:32 PM

Most of those shots are taken by remote camera, you have to be 5 miles away for Shuttle lift off. If he was the close the last thing he'd have to worry about is being burned...since his internal organs and skeleton would have been crushed by the shock wave.

Those pics are fantastic, I love the Delta 4, that's one big rocket! Supposedly next month NASA is testing an Aries 1 unmanned rocket which is the replacement vehicle for the shuttle.