Makers 2021: Benjamin Coil
My name is Benjamin Coil, and I am a sophomore in the Honors College at ECU studying public health and aspiring to become a physician assistant. I have had the privilege of being a member of this year’s makers arts residency. The theme for this year’s makers projects was time. In my projects, I have tried to capture the essence of time as seen in nature. I chose photography as the medium for my projects. I have been an avid photographer for almost 9 years and have come to love photographing landscape and night scenes. I hope you find pleasure in viewing my work!
One of my pieces is an image that captures the ambient light of cars traveling on the Linn Cove Viaduct at night. Growing up, I have always enjoyed spending time with family and friends in the mountains and I have found it to be a place to go to rest, reflect, and reset. I am very passionate about photographing landscape scenes and I couldn’t think of a better place to capture a image depicting a moment in time.
In another piece, I tried to capture the awe-inspiring beauty of the pattern observed among the stars as the Earth rotates on its axes. The images for this piece were collected on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and it depicts upwards of an hour of time.
Many times, we go outside and look up and think about how beautiful the night sky is in a single moment. We also rarely think about just how small we are and how fast life goes until things are put into perspective. My goal with this piece was to capture the essence of time and to put things into perspective by showing an hour in one image.
http://blog.ecu.edu/sites/honorscollege/files/2021/04/coil1.jpg
My third piece is an image showing the transitional phases of the moon as the positioning of the Earth, moon, and sun change. While most everyone is likely familiar with the phases of the moon, I wanted to go out and capture images of each phase for myself and combine them in a single photo. Some of the first nighttime photos I took were shots of the moon. I have since advanced to more in-depth astrophotography, but the process of creating this piece was an enjoyable experience that brought back memories of my early photography days.