Yesterday morning I took my boys to school early before the sunrise here. I drove over to a dirt road area near their school and found some puddles from recent rain storms. This setting of puddles in a dirt road transformed into the surface of the Exoplanet Gleise 3293 b which is located approximately 59 lightyears from our own solar system.
I am amazed at the amount of exoplanets being discovered in our time. Detection methods have made it possible to find planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy to the tune of trillions. From NASA Exoplanet news: “A recent statistical estimate places, on average, at least one planet around every star in the galaxy. That means there’s something on the order of a trillion planets in our galaxy alone, many of them in Earth’s size range.”
While contemplating the commentary of the above image I came up with a new space agency, Interstellar Exoplanet Ekistics. Ekistics was a new word for me and it perfectly fit my acronym of ISEE. Ekistics is the study of human settlements. What better way to explore an Exoplanet than to be looking for future possible settlements in space? The possibility of this future is very exiting to me. I have always been a fan of space movies and shows including Star Trek: the Next Generation as well as the recent movie Interstellar. Space really is the final frontier and I feel if we would focus more on the vast exploration potential of space our own planetary political issues would seem infinitesimally insignificant.
When editing these shots I really wanted to give a sense of movement and other worldly reality.
I used the Plotagraph app for iPhone. It uses an intuitive interface of arrows and anchor points to make your image come alive.
The movement added to this image created a new narrative. I loved the bokeh but I didn’t necessarily want the surface of this exoplanet to have liquid water. This bokeh was created from the sunrise reflecting off a puddle of water. Adding movement of the bokeh changed the narrative to a landscape unheard of on our earth. A moving, shifting, magnetized surface of loose polished crystal. Islands of solid land floating upon the maglev flowing surface. It really painted an awesome image in my mind.
In my shooting I did include some alien robots that sneak up on Yuri – but it just did not seem to fit the narrative well so I included them below just for a fun possible scenario.
Overall I love the storyline that anything space entails – it really opens up possibilities in the imagination to create unlimited ideas!
~ Joecow
What do you think about space? About the discovery of trillions of exoplanets? Do you believe in life besides ours in the vastness of the cosmos? Comment below – I would love to hear your input.