The Flying Photographer- George Steinmetz
- Gleekeen
- Feb 28, 2020
- 7 min read
"What I really love to do is photograph things that nobody's ever seen before. Or, if it's something people have seen before, to show it in a different way."
-Says George Steinmetz, The Flying Photographer.
This article is about George Steinmetz - a photographer, an explorer, an author, a self pilot and a person with extraordinary passion and skill for his work.
So without further ado, lets get started.
Bio:
George Steinmetz was born in Beverly Hills in 1957. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Geophysics in 1979. He has a restless curiosity for the unknown: remote deserts, obscure cultures, the mysteries of science and technology. His current passion is photographing the world’s deserts while piloting a motorized paraglider.
George lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his wife, Wall Street Journal editor Lisa Bannon, their daughter, Nell, and twin sons John and Nicholas.
A regular contributor to National Geographic and GEO Magazines, he has explored subjects ranging from the remotest stretches of Arabia’s Empty Quarter to the unknown tree people of Irian Jaya. He is currently working on a project to document large scale agriculture and the global food supply. In addition to editorial work, Steinmetz also does corporate and advertising photography. His commercial clients include Toshiba, Union Bank of Switzerland, General Motors, and Sigma Camera, among others. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Smithsonian, TIME, The New York Times Magazine.
Getting into Photography:
During his graduation at Stanford University, he became "a little bit restless," so he dropped out and spent the next two years hitchhiking across Africa. He says it was "a real dirt bag safari." He didn't take much with him: a snakebite kit, a small stove, a 35mm camera.
He returned to complete his course at Stanford and, after a brief internship with an oil company, got a job in a photo studio, was fired, got another job with a photojournalist, and was fired again. But the photojournalist kept in touch and passed on jobs. In 1989, George got his first story with National Geographic.
"I loved taking pictures," he says, "and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if I could make a living doing this?” and it was the result of this thought that we have so many breath taking works done by him till date.
When National Geographic gave him a break:
"My first story for National Geographic was about oil exploration because I studied geophysics in college and knew the oil business," George says. "So I could take pictures that told a story most people weren't aware of. I was a decent photographer, but I really knew my topic. That's the key. I think knowledge is much more important than photographic skill. You want to be able to tell your story. You have to do your research and know your topic really well."
Since 1986, George has completed more than 40 major photo essays for National Geographic and 25 stories for GEO magazine in Germany.
Steinmetz's expeditions to the Sahara and Gobi deserts were featured on National Geographic Explorer TV in 1998 and 2002
Becoming The Flying Photographer :
George got into motorised paragliding in 1997 out of necessity, after a bush pilot he'd hired dropped out of a job in Niger and now he is best known for his aerial photography.
"The paraglider is a different experience, It has a little bit less control, but a lot more range which opens me up to discover things.”-George says
About his Flying Chair:
Steinmetz has done much of his work with a foot-launched motorized paraglider—known affectionately as his “flying lawn chair”—which he pilots while taking pictures, as well as using drones to document climate change and the global food supply.
It's essentially a seat, a sail, a tank of gas, a propeller, and him. In his native USA, you don't need a pilot's licence to fly one. And it gives him a different perspective on places he relishes. This motorized glider flies at 30 miles per hour for two hours on a 10-liter tank of fuel and lets him fly at heights of between 200 and 500 feet — slow and high enough to capture amazing pictures that register on a human scale.
To the obvious question of why one would fly in an unsafe-looking motorized glider instead of taking pictures from a plane, or even with a drone, Steinmetz says:
“Drones aren’t really made for exploration. They are limited by battery life and the view through a five-inch screen. Planes, meanwhile, fly too high and too fast. I like photographing not from a great height, but from a couple hundred feet up, so you see the scale. It’s much more intimate and we can decode what’s happening below. Flying helps you to get into areas you otherwise cannot.”
For photography, he now considers the paraglider to be better than a plane. It's hassle-free – no runways, no permits, no other pilots – and his aerial shots are more intimate. "I love seeing things from above," he says. "I think it's a perspective most people aren't used to. From above, you can not only see the expanse of things, but also three-dimensionally at the same time."
Steinmetz has discovered, surprising historical ecological, and socio-political patterns emerge when you are looking down at the world from a flying lawn chair.
His gadget to captures the world:
His current camera – the Canon EOS 5DS R– enables him to do things that would have been impossible not that long ago.
"I love the high-resolution sensor. It lets me do with a 35mm camera what I used to need a medium format or more to do. I have all the flexibility of a DSLR with zoom lenses and large aperture, but in a handheld device.”
. His favourite lens is the Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM. "I probably take three-quarters of my pictures with that lens," he says. "I have telephotos and super-wides and other things too. But I find I can do almost everything with that one lens.
Books :
He is the author of four books, African Air, Empty Quarter, Desert Air, and New York Air, which feature portfolios of his work in many regions of the world.
. His first book, African Air, is a compilation of ten years of flying in Africa, much of it done with a motorized paraglider. This experimental aircraft is the lightest and slowest motorized flying machine in the world and offers a unique perspective over remote landscapes.
Story behind Africa tour.
George Steinmetz’s got the idea to travel Africa after he dropped out of Stanford to hitchhike across Africa in what he described as a graduate course in ecological ethnography.
These are big words that mostly consisted of hitching free rides on top of trains because he couldn’t afford to ride inside them. But as he crossed the landscape, he wondered how cool it would be to take pictures of the rich landscape if he were flying through the air like a bird. Twenty years later, he convinced National Geographic to send him back to Africa to take pictures from the “slowest, lightest aircraft in the world.”
Isn’t it interesting?
. His second book, The Empty Quarter, documents three expeditions into the Arabian landscape, its people, and its wildlife, the heart of Arabia, where he traversed the world's largest sand sea.
. Desert Air is a photographic collection of the world’s “extreme deserts,” which receive less than four inches of precipitation per year. Included are photographs of the Gobi Desert, the Sahara, and Death Valley.
. New York Air is an aerial portrait of New York City with all its boroughs in all four seasons.
Awards :
.George has won numerous awards for photography, his two first prizes being in science and technology from World Press Photo in 1995 and 1998.
. In 2006 he was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to document the work of scientists in the Dry Valleys and volcanos of Antarctica.
. He has also won awards and citations from Pictures of the Year- The 74th Annual POYi , Overseas Press Club, the Environmental Vision Award from Pictures of the Year and Life Magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards, and was named National Geographic’s Adventurer of the year in 2008.
. His most recent project on large scale food production won The One Club Gold Cube Award.
Recognitions :
. There is a selection of his work exclusively represented by Anastasia Photo in NYC.
. His work has also been exhibited in Dubai, the Brookfield Winter Garden in New York., The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, The Konica-Minolta Plaza in Tokyo as well as public venues Houston, Denver, Los Angeles, Toronto, Stuttgart, Expo 2015 in Milano, the Triennale di Milano, and twice in the Festival Photo La Gacilly in France.
. He was featured at TED Global 2017 in Tanzania, where he presented his work on Africa.
. He was interviewed by the Explorers Club and presented his work at the LOOK3 Festival in Charlottesville, the New England Aquarium, and Harvard University. The LOOK3 Festival hosted Steinmetz as a keynote speaker in 2011 for his presentation titled "Wild Air".
. He contributed stunning aerial photography to "Losing Earth," Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting-supported journalism that took over an entire issue of The New York Times Magazine.
Winding up :
Over the course of his travels spanning many years, Steinmetz has recorded many changes – vanishing trees, soil erosion and depletion of aquatic life as the human population explodes, consuming all the resources of the planet.
George believes things can change.
"If we can find a way to meet the demand without expanding the human footprint on the planet, that's very significant for environmental reasons. But we have to realise that, for example, our oceans are a limited resource and we can't fish them all out. We can't cut down every tree in the Amazon to plant more corn. We have to start adjusting some of our behaviour to consume a little bit less intensively. I think most people aren't aware that food production is an environmental issue."
Last but not the least and most importantly, his advice to aspiring photographers is simple and precise:
If you want to take interesting pictures, stand in front of interesting things. He stresses the importance of being in the moment. “Young people want to work for Nat Geo, travel all over world, but where you are currently is a very interesting place. Wherever I’m there, I’m there. It’s easy to think it’s going to be interesting in the next place, but for me, this is the next place.”
George Steinmetz's official website : https://georgesteinmetz.com/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/geosteinmetz/
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/george.steinmetz/
Sources :
George Steinmetz's official website :
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