Archive

This may shock you, but Elephants are BIG.  That just makes them more fun to sculpt!  Naturally, if I wanted to make a giant animal I needed a giant balloon.  The inspiration for my Elephant came from giant balloons I climb inside during programs.  They can inflate up to six feet with a leaf blower.  […]

One of my favorite rainbow shots has little to do with the rainbow itself.  While traveling through Israel, our tour group had the opportunity to stand high on Mt. Carmel, overlooking the valley of Megiddo.  You may not recognize that name right off, but this valley is the place of “Armageddon,” mentioned in Revelation 16:16.  I […]

It might be obvious to you while looking at The Inflated Story of Noah that I made more than one rainbow.  To be honest, my failures with the rainbow are a great reminder to me of the grace God has shown humanity.  I set out from the beginning of this project to avoid photoshopping any […]

Regardless of the smaller rainbows, I felt like a special shot was needed for the last page of the book.  It needed a full, arching, rainbow!  With that in mind, I grabbed several guys from our church college group and headed toward Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga.  The weather was iffy when we hit the road, […]

Knowing I had nearly made enough animals for this Inflated Story, I set out in fall 2015 to make a final sculpting push. Even though more international trips were unlikely, I wanted to make the final sculptures special. Fortunately, the United States of America is an incredibly diverse place, and the Everglades beckoned from the […]

One of the most natural sculptures I photographed for the book was the woodcutter.  Only God knows whether he happens to look like anyone in Noah’s family, but I like to think of him as Japheth.  Balloons work well for making a ripped balloon person, and I had spent enough time making large balloon people […]

Did you know a volcano can be invisible from 18.6 miles away?  The haze at that distance can make it disappear.  Even worse, the atmosphere around an active volcano can make it awfully popular with the clouds.  That is to say, I was excited about photographing balloon monkeys in Ecuador, but by the third day […]

Balloons are a really cool way to connect with people.  That’s one of the big reasons I’ve held on to the hobby for so long.  It feels awesome to help a child with wounded pride smile again or cheer up someone’s day with a touch of inflated randomness.  When it comes to truly making a […]

It was July 19, 2008.  Tomorrow we would leave for camp, but today was set aside for final preparations.  I was crossing every “t, dotting every “i,” and finishing all of those simple, final details that come up before a trip when the phone rang… less than 24 hours before a group of senior high […]

The seeds of The Inflated Story of Noah began germinating in my mind around 2002, but the first on-location, large-scale, balloon sculpture didn’t happen until the middle of 2007.  I hadn’t traveled extensively in the intervening years, and my ideas were still taking root.  In 2007, I traveled to Alaska with my parents.  I was […]