LA based photographer Mike Dempsey illustrates the nuances of universal truths in his engrossing photo series Gravity, where people are shown in mid-air, hurtling towards the earth for an inevitable impact.
Dempsey, who grew up skateboarding, is no stranger to the skate culture: this served as inspiration for the project. Somewhere between the take-off and landing, he captures the beautiful split-second of gracefulness in flight. And though we know it won’t last long, it certainly makes for stunning images.
Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of Photoshop involved in Gravity: Dempsey actually found people willing to throw caution — and themselves — to the wind. A camera attachment, called intervalometer, allowed him to shoot multiple frames for a single jump. Meticulous adjustments and reshoots were done to get the movement and tiny details correctly, and as you can see from the photos below, it all paid off.
More from Mike Dempsey here and on Instagram.
Images © Mike Dempsey / with permission