Mitch Payne's Renewable Energy Mitch Payne's Renewable Energy Mitch Payne's Renewable Energy Mitch Payne's Renewable Energy Mitch Payne's Renewable Energy

Mitch Payne’s Renewable Energy

In this collaborative photo series, photographer Mitch Payne worked with designer Kyle Bean to develop images of the micro systems of renewable energy. The goal of the series was to strip the systems to their simplest possible signifiers. As Payne describes this motive,

“It’s important not to over-complicate the subject, I think science can be as much a visual thing as a complicated spiral of information. When things are visually as simple as this, it can be easier to engage with a subject. For this particular series, each image depicts a glass tank housing various setups acting as ‘energy sources’ that power a light bulb.”

In the same vein as his series on the periodic table, Payne’s work focuses on how to represent movement and energy on an abstract level. The artist bounced around ideas with Bean and art director Gemma Fletcher on how best to interpret the systems in a simple and self-explanatory manner. The results —  keeping the systems inside of the tank concentrated the message and focused on the materials that create energy. As with many of Payne’s works, this series aims to educate and enhance the viewers perception of current events within the scientific umbrella.

The artist also wants readers to know that he is looking to collaborate with scientific writers on various subjects. If you have an interesting column or subject and would be interested in creating a “Photographic Essay,” get in touch here.

- Lee Jones 

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Mitch Payne

We featured some of Payne’s work yesterday with his artistically designed periodic table, but we just had to add some more. In this series Poultry, Payne snaps shots of chickens in flight. You would never suspect that just ordinary poultry could look so stunning. For more of his photography, click here.

- Lee Jones 

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Visual Exploration of the Period Table

This visual representation of the periodic table—made by photographer Mitch Payne, model maker Louis Standard and graphic designer Sean Docherty—is one of the coolest artsci representations I’ve seen recently. As Payne describes the project,

“The modern periodic table, based on atomic number and electron configuration, was created primarily by a Russian chemist, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, and a German physicist, Julius Lothar Meyer, both working independently. They both created similar periodic tables only a few months apart in 1869. Mendeleev created the first periodic table based on atomic weight. He observed that many elements had similar properties, and that they occur periodically. Hence, the table’s name.

His periodic law states that the chemical and physical properties of the elements vary in a periodic way with their atomic weights. The modern one states that the properties vary with atomic number, not weight. Elements in Mendeleev’s table were arranged in rows called periods. The columns were called groups. Elements of each group had similar properties. The periodic table can be divided into ten families of elements exhibiting common characteristics. These images try to illustrate those characteristics using abstract photography” 

This project is both art and education. As Payne states, they wanted to do a project that not only allowed for artistic impression, but also to create a body of educational work for a different demographic. The trio aim to add an interesting and creative spin to something that some may perceive as dull an un-inspiring. Once you know the wonder, you can’t go back. For more on Payne’s work, click here. 

- Lee Jones

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