Aerospace Project for Relativity Space

The aerospace photography project was to photograph Relativity Space's 4 Generation 3D Printer for its public debut and they needed a beautiful rendition of the technology for this purpose. 

My aerospace photography and industrial photography experience came in handy since the printer was a whopping 25 feet tall. For this, we used about 10,000 watts of strobe lights mounted on two 25ft tall towers and shot through a 20X30 ft silk mounted on two more 25ft tall towers,

We additionally had 4,000 watts in the background and 1,000 watts in the foreground.  I knew in theory how to light the robot but had not scaled the idea to this size before. Hence I brought in three photography assistants with movie and car experience to pull off this project safely and efficiently. 

There were four setups, that day. Three shots of the printer, and a 4th shooting a smaller robotic welder. We had no close calls and everything went as planned. Of course, I had a week to plan the project and an amazing team.

This is my favorite kind of aerospace photography project because there is so much at stake, and it demands all my attention to plan for every eventuality. The thought of forgetting something critical could be extremely expensive and detrimental to my career. In short, there was no room for failure. On top of that there was a video crew filming the whole project so I did feel a bit of pressure to perform.

Giant 25ft 3D Printer shot for Relativity Space

A new project for shooting their 3D Printers.

3D Printer shot new project

This 3D Printer was photographed in Relativity Space’s new facilities in Long Beach, CA.

Aerospace Photography Project

New 3D printer designed to print rocket housings.

Large silk setup

Large silk placed to light printer.

10 light, 10,000 watt setup

Photography assignment shot for Relativity Space with 14,000 watt setup for silks alone.