Photo by NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy, taken from aboard the International Space Station.
There’s a long story that goes with this photo that I’ll do my best to tell quickly.
When my girlfriend and I first met, I was obsessed with space and astronauts (and have been since college). Together, we created a spacesuit that ended up winning the WIRED Halloween costume contest. We spent more than a month working on it.
Not long after, she gave me a really cool pin of a surfing astronaut, and it sort of commemorated the whole experience. I liked it so much that I wore it on my photo jacket, and it became a permanent part of my attire.
Over the next few years, several twists of fate brought me to NASA as a photographer, and I got to be around real astronauts and real space suits. Their official portraits quickly became my favorite thing to shoot, and while I was photographing Chris Cassidy, he just happened to bust out a surfer pose. Several months later, I thought about how uncannily similar Chris’ photo and that pin were, so I told him this story and gave it to him. Not only did he end up bringing it to space, he photographed it “surfing” in the cupola of the space station, and when he returned, he was kind enough to give it back to me.
When we made that costume, I was just enjoying the process: looking at photos of spacesuits for inspiration, visiting scrap stores, and spending time with my girlfriend. I was just having fun. It’s unbelievable to me that this somehow lead to something actually going to space. That pin is a real astronaut now, and Heidi and I are still very much in love (along with our two dog children).
I’m beyond grateful to Chris (Go Navy!) for his generosity. To me, this is more than amazing – it’s further proof that life is inherently mysterious, wonderful, and worth exploring.