Jake Socha's art has function in addition to form.
Socha, a postdoc at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, studies biomechanics—how mechanical design relates to an organism's function. During his time as a grad student at the University of Chicago, Socha became particularly interested in flying snakes.
"Here you have an animal that's a cylinder, and somehow it's able to move through the air," he says. "On first thought you might think, 'Alright, well, you're a cylinder, that sounds like it's a pretty bad shape if you want to move through the air.' So how do they do that?"
Socha uses both still photography and video to capture images of flying snakes, both at rest and in various stages of flight. He examines these images to gain a detailed understanding of how snakes deform and move as they glide.
The still images were mostly taken with a Nikon SLR, some with flash and some without. Socha says flash is advantageous when shooting flying snakes: The light only shines for a very small fraction of a second, so the snake does not blur as it moves. The instantaneous pulse of light freezes the snake in the frame.
Socha says he finds his photographs to be aesthetically and emotionally pleasing, as well as scientifically useful.
"An image of a snake in the air, to me, is just fascinating from a gut-level perspective," he says. "The other thing I like about these snakes, besides their gliding ability, is some of the species are just really, strikingly good looking."
Socha provided the captions for this slideshow. He retains the copyright to all photographs.
Biography
Jake Socha attended Duke University as an undergraduate, where he studied physics and biology. He earned his Ph.D. in biomechanics at the University of Chicago. He is now the Ugo Fano postdoctoral fellow at Argonne National Laboratory.
