Floating in the Desert Air

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When George Steinmetz hitchhiked across the Sahara desert as a young man, he felt like an ant crawling along an endless carpet. He knew he had to get up higher to make sense of the vast expanse.

He had gone to Africa on assignment after studying at Stanford University. Well, it was an assignment he gave himself, actually, as he spent two years bumming around the continent imagining himself to be shooting photo essays for National Geographic.

Today he is a National Geographic photographer, with a new book, “Desert Air,” a thick volume that explores deserts in 27 countries and took 15 years to complete.

The project started when Mr. Steinmetz talked his editors at National Geographic into doing a big article on the Central Sahara. He knew he would have to be aloft to capture the desert's visual impact, but at the last moment his pilot, the only commercial ultralight pilot in Niger, backed out.

“I had to find a way to fly on my own,” Mr. Steinmetz said.

And that's what he did.

So what if he wasn't a pilot. He settled on an odd hybrid contraption called a paraglider. Imagine a parachute or a big kite that you hang underneath, with a motor that looks like a big leaf blower on your back.

George Steinmetz Mr. Steinmetz in his motorized paraglider in Chad, on assignment for National Geographic Magazine.

“The first time you fly in one of these things, the view is just staggering because it's like you're in a lawn chair and there's just nothing between you and eternity,” Mr. Steinmetz said.

To take off, he'd lay the paraglider behind him, run forward, sq ueeze the throttle and be flying after about 50 steps.

It's fairly flimsy, but there are no plastic bubbles or wing struts obstructing a photographer's view, and Mr. Steinmetz has the advantage of being both pilot and photographer. On the other hand, you can't carry much, so Mr. Steinmetz generally uses one camera body and one lens - a 24- to 105-millimeter zoom.

The paraglider also allows Mr Steinmetz, 55, to dip much lower than a plane or helicopter could. He says that leads to “a more intimate kind of aerial photograph.” He mostly stays 100 to 200 feet above the ground, though he can go as high as 6,000 feet to photograph very large objects or vast patterns.

Once he started using the paraglider in deserts, he realized it was uniquely suited for that environment because he could take off and land almost anywhere. He also became entranced with the unique panoramas it provided.

“It's beautiful because it's like the earth with its skin stripped away - without vegetation,” he said. “It's just laid bare. You can see rocks, camel tracks, the courses of ancient rivers and remnants of civilizations.”

George Steinmetz Mr. Steinmetz took a self-portrait with a pole-mounted camera attached to his shoe while piloting a motorized paraglider. He was on assignment for National Geographic Magazine, for an article about the Empty Quarter of Arabia.

Despite the difficulty in lugging it around - and getting it through customs - the paraglider has another advantage. In many of the places he photographed there was no alternative.

Often, for instance in Niger, there is no helicopter or plane available. In other countries, it is impossible to get permission to fly.

“Y ou want to go take aerial photos in China? Good luck renting a helicopter,” he said. “Saudi Arabia? Same deal. Iran? Libya? Forget about it.”

Even with permission and a helicopter, there is often no place to land, as the contraption would be ruined by landing in sand.

“Desert Air” is a result of passion, obsession and ample amounts of time and stubbornness. It has been an epic undertaking for Mr. Steinmetz. Each of the 27 countries he visited involved a separate trip that he had to research, organize and figure out how to finance. For most trips, he was able to get a magazine assignment, mostly from National Geographic or Geo Magazine.

Although he was sleeping mostly outside, in the sand, it still cost him close to $1,000 a day to be in the field - for the three cars, guides, flight assistant, aircraft and backup craft, plus the fuel, water and food.

Mr. Stein metz likes to call what he does “exploration photography.”

“You're seeing things that in many cases nobody's every seen before,” he said. “You're flying in areas that it's never been possible to fly into. In this world we think everything's been seen and done. There's a lot of fantastic things just waiting to be seen - and photographed.”

George Steinmetz A cotton processing factory outside Yuli in Xinjiang, China.

An exhibit of Mr. Steinmetz's desert photos is on view at the Anastasia Photo Gallery on Orchard Street in Manhattan through March 3. He will be signing his bo ok Thursday night at the International Center of Photography, at 6 p.m.

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