Jason Grow Photography

Recently had the pleasure of photographing Daniel Cziczo, an atmospheric researcher at MIT, for Colin Jaworski at Technology Review Magazine.

Cziczo studies cirrus clouds and more specifically the aerosols and particles that form and affect them and consequently their effect on global climate change. Another area he’s looking pretty hard at is the whole notion of essentially creating an atmosphere where none exists now… think red planets and long term space colonization. I’ve said it before, photographing at MIT can make me feel like a real dunce… especially when you consider that what most of us would consider science fiction, these folks call their job.

The magazine chose a shot of him in the lab with a cloud chamber and a sky shot from the rooftop of the MIT Green Building for their cover… both of which were dandy… but I kind of liked the whimsy of this shot of him against the chalkboard.

Daniel Cziczo, atmospheric researcher at MIT

The older I get the more I realize how much I don’t know. The more I work for publications like HHMI Bulletin, MIT Technology Review, Fast Company etc., photographing science and technology rock stars, the more I realize how much I will NEVER EVER EVER know… really a lot more than I would like to admit, but this stuff is so cool. Even if I don’t fully understand what it is they’re doing, I’m very very glad they are.

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, Director of the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies at MIT. Photographed for HHMI Bulletin, Winter 2013 http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/winter2013/features/bhatia_profile.html

Personally I think it’s a bit selfish when people are both brilliant and handsome. It’s even worse when they’re really nice as well.  I know that’s a bit shallow on my part, but I’m not apologizing… That’s the combination I had to deal with in photographing Deb Roy, professor at the MIT Media Lab and co-founder & chairman at BlueFin Labs for the The Human Face of Big Data project (http://humanfaceofbigdata.com).

Take a look at his TED Talk to get a get a taste of what he’s up to in both cognitive research and what may well be the ultimate in extreme home videos: http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html  (there’s a great audio timelapse of his son learning the word “water” starting about 4:15).

Bluefin Labs co-founder, Chairman and CEO Deb Roy

Bluefin Labs co-founder, Chairman and CEO Deb Roy - The Human Face of Big Data select

We’ve managed to avoid an apocalypse and at least one fiscal cliff. Some pretty cool and wonderful things happened last year, but some pretty horrible stuff that ought to shake our social sensibilities happened as well. And while some things are looking up, it’s still definitely tough for a lot of folks out there (my wife Sarah works at our local food pantry and sees first hand that even in the land of plenty, it ain’t plentiful for everyone). Let’s make 2013 the year we start to get our act together and work to make the world just a bit better for all our neighbors near and far…

A recent shoot I did had me pondering fame, especially in light of the supersaturation of celebrity and exposure that is a staple of our 21st Century existence. With the tweeting, the youtubing, the liking and sharing and facebooking nearly every conceivable aspect and moment of our lives, we are inundated with a tsunami of possibilities for becoming instantly famous (or infamous). When a 16-year old kid becomes an international pop star worth over $100M because his mom uploaded up some home videos of him on Youtube, it takes the whole concept of hanging out at Schwab’s Pharmacy to a stratospherically different dimension.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, photographed for Time Magazine.

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I’ve photographed some pretty famous people I think, you know, actors, authors, artists. I can sorta play ‘Six-degrees from Kevin Bacon’ because I got to photograph him when I lived in San Francisco. At one point I photographed The MOST famous actor in the world, Jackie Chan, and no one I knew had ever heard of the guy. (By the way, one of the sweetest guys, who can also break every bone in your body, you’re ever likely to meet).

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Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem with someone being famous, it just doesn’t register with me as a singularly important identifying trait. Most of the people I photograph are being shot because they’ve actually done something really really smart, or cool, or that’s never been done before. I mean, Snooki is “famous” but I don’t actually know why she’s famous, and I’m sure the Kardashians are lovely people, but I don’t know why I know who they are, I just do.

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It got me thinking about the subjects of many of my assignments over the years doing, envisioning and creating things that impact our lives in very profound, amazing and permanent ways,  yet who sail way below any celebrity radar. Ray Tomlinson for instance, the guy who put the “@” in your email, writing a protocol that completely changed the very means by which we communicate. It’s pretty unlikely that his name will every be uttered in the same sentence as Lady Gaga. No slight to the Gaga, but here’s a guy who really should be not only super famous but insanely, Zuckerbergian-rich, yet if he were a final Jeopardy question I think most players would draw a blank.

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Then there’s this guy Sir Tim Berners-Lee – did I mention that he’s the guy who put the WWW into your every waking hour? And he’s a KNIGHT! How cool is that? I bet you if you asked 100 random people on any street (except maybe in Kendall Square or Palo Alto) who this guy is and you’d get way more shrugs than glimmers of recognition. Ask folks to identify him from a picture and the level of vagueness would probably rise to nearly 100%. Yet what he he did literally changed the entire freaking world – forever.

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I thought it was particularly cool that director Danny Boyle included Sir Tim in the Olympic festivities. As we sat in our living room watching the spectacle, I thought of the billions of people around the world,  staring at their screen wondering who the hell was this guy and why was he tapping on an old computer in the middle of the Olympics Opening Ceremony?

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Well, Boyle got it spot on because he figured out that the Olympics is an event that ties the entirety of the world together, if only for a few weeks. What better symbol of that profound human interconnectedness than having the guy who found a way to link us all together, tapping out the message: “This is for everyone”.

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http://techland.time.com/2012/09/05/10-questions-for-sir-tim-berners-lee/

Ray Tomlinson, The Father of Email.

My girls love to read. I mean really really love to read. They got their library cards when they were four and now they’re tattered and well worn… so when I got a call from Time Magazine editor Marie Tobias to photograph Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series for their 10 Questions feature, I asked them if they knew this guy… I think if I had told them I was photographing Justin Bieber they would have shrugged and asked if they could have some fudge, but Kinney got a most enthusiastic thumbs up… so much so that I took the rare step of having them come on the shoot with me. Now this isn’t something I do on a regular basis, but heading to Jeff Kinney’s house in Plainville on the day before their 11th birthday, I figured I’d be in pretty big trouble if they didn’t get a chance to meet one of their literary faves. As for celebrity, for a guy with a smash book series selling a few gazillion copies and a few movies under his belt, not to mention his “day job” as the creator of Poptropica, Kinney seems utterly non-plussed by it all – self-effacing, a bit shy but utterly kind and generous with his time.

Jeff Kinney, author of the popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Late last year Bill Black at Reader’s Digest commissioned me to photograph portraits for a new series their magazine was running on Hometown Heroes – stories of ordinary folks stepping up to do the extraordinary for their neighbors. A duet of heart-tugging stories which in one instance, in the case of Donald Lubeck and Jeremie Wentworth meant saving a life, and in the other – Belva Davis and Nancy Brigham – it meant saving a home.

In addition to shooting the portraits, one in Western Mass and the other in Detroit, Bill asked me to add video to the mix which was a new challenge but one I enjoyed immensely.  Thanks to Michael Kasino for pulling the edit together!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p40C8CY9N4&feature=player_embedded (Belva Davis & Nancy Brigham)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1JeFGrEvhVg (Jeremy Wentworth and Donald Lubeck).

http://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/hometown-heroes-saving-a-neighbor’s-life/?trkid=more_to_read

http://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/hometown-heroes-neighbors-battle-the-bank/