As a Seattle-based 3D animation artist, Cody Cobb spends most of his working life behind a computer. Around a decade ago, feeling the need for an escape valve, he started going on solo camping trips around the Pacific Northwest on the weekends. As he ventured farther and farther afield, those weekend trips turned into week-long excursions, which turned into month-long odysseys. “I discovered that there’s this whole other world out there, and it’s so accessible,” Cobb says.
Cobb began taking landscape photographs during these trips, at first with a basic 35-mm point-and-shoot camera. Subconsciously, he found himself “designing” his photographs the same way he designed his computer animations. “They were influenced by all the time I spend manipulating geography, arranging shapes and colors. That part of my brain doesn’t shut off when I’m outside.” With influences ranging from abstract expressionism to contemporary photographers like his friend Reuben Wu, Cobb’s dreamlike work soon attracted critical attention—in 2018 he was named one of PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch.
Last winter, Cobb, who has dealt with depression all his adult life, suffered a major depressive episode during a two-month-long solo trip through California and Utah. Unable to sleep at night, he began exploring places like Death Valley in a semi-delirious state, getting purposely lost and shooting what he found with a Fujifilm GFX50, using light from a headlamp and A few small LEDs with colored gels. “I would just wander and encounter shapes,” he says. When he got back to Seattle, he created the final photographs by compositing together multiple exposures of the same scene to ensure the right light balance.
The resulting images are hallucinatory in their intensity, evoking a fever dream or a psychedelic trip—an effect created in part by the absence of shadows, a trick Cobb learned from 3D modeling. The series, appropriately titled Dark Side, also reflects Cobb’s psychological state at the time. “Allowing myself to be lost and vulnerable when I shot these was pretty important,” he explains. “It was so cold, and I was deliberately fasting because I seem to get my best shots when I’m slightly hungry. It heightens all my senses.”
Last winter’s depressive episode marred what is usually a therapeutic exercise for Cobb. That’s why, despite the bad experience, he plans to continue taking multi-month solo trips. “I kind of need those solitary journeys,” he says. “It’s not always a comfortable thing to do. It’s lonely, it’s hard to plan, and it takes a lot of effort—but it’s worth it.”
More Great WIRED Stories
- You are already having sex with robots
- The ethics of hiding your data from the machines
- Smaller cities are trying to plug America’s brain drain
- Why the NFL’s field goal record is waiting to be smashed
- ? Facial recognition is suddenly everywhere. Should you worry? Plus, read the latest news on artificial intelligence
- ? Torn between the latest phones? Never fear—check out our iPhone buying guide and favorite Android phones
14 comments
It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d without a doubt donate to this outstanding blog!
I guess for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to brand new updates and will share this website with my Facebook group.
Talk soon!
Thanks for the good writeup. It actually was a amusement account it.
Glance complicated to far delivered agreeable from you!
However, how could we communicate?
This article is truly a nice one it helps new web
users, who are wishing in favor of blogging.
What a material of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable know-how concerning unpredicted
feelings.
We stumbled over here different web page and thought I should check
things out. I like what I see so i am just following
you. Look forward to finding out about your web page for a second time.
I am really impressed with your writing skills and also
with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme or did
you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the nice quality
writing, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one nowadays.
Hi there, I enjoy reading all of your article post.
I wanted to write a little comment to support you.
Thank you a bunch for sharing this with all people
you really understand what you are talking about!
Bookmarked. Please also discuss with my website =). We
could have a hyperlink change arrangement between us
This information is invaluable. How can I find out more?
If some one wishes expert view about blogging
afterward i advise him/her to pay a visit this weblog,
Keep up the nice work.
Please let me know if you’re looking for a author for your weblog.
You have some really great posts and I feel I would be a good
asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d love to write
some articles for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine.
Please shoot me an email if interested. Thanks!
Simply desire to say your article is as amazing. The clearness in your post is just excellent and i can assume
you’re an expert on this subject. Fine with your permission let
me to grab your feed to keep updated with forthcoming post.
Thanks a million and please carry on the gratifying work.
I used to be able to find good information from your blog
posts.
This is my first time go to see at here and i am truly pleassant to read everthing at one place.