All images by Ben Von Wong. Used with permission.
Photographer Ben Von Wong’s latest crazy photo project involves storm chasing. “The idea for the project came initially because my partner Anna Tenne, thought that I could do something amazing with stormchasing.” Ben tells the Phoblographer in an email. “When finally she brought up the idea of doing something around climate change, I caved and decided that it would be worth creating!”
To do this project, Ben spent two weeks storm chasing with an ambulance. While storm chasing in and of itself sounds pretty crazy to some of us, doing it with an ambulance sounds even tougher to get done. But amazingly, Ben says that it wasn’t that tough and didn’t take much convincing. All he had to do was describe the project and work with motivated and passionate folks.
During the shoot, Ben didn’t really need to explain his creative vision as much as have a safety briefing. “…with a legitimately small chance of success I tried my best to manage expectations and tell people that it could be amazing…but that there were no guarantees.” says Ben.
To really get the message across about global warming and climate change, Ben used a special type-face on the series. “Without the text, it just looks like a funny portrait, but with it–hopefully people can understand the parallels behind climate change and a building storm and the danger it represents to us.”
