rocket to nowhere

a photo by kevin cooley, which he describes below:


"This image was created before dawn on a cold, snowy morning near the small town of Lyman in Southwestern Wyoming. To create the streak in the sky, I used an old military flare. After a long period of failed experimentation with model rockets, fireworks, and marine flares, I settled on military flares for two reasons. They are very bright and enjoy a nice long hang-time in the air of around 8-10 seconds. Second, I really liked their predictable trajectories, something which I wasn’t getting with the other methods I tested. The flares are all from various militaries in Eastern Europe and date from the late 1970’s and 80’s. I was surprised to find hardly any duds in the entire gross I used for this project."