For some, photography is about capturing the moment. For others, photography is about creating the moment. Some do this by waiting, patiently, and aligning the forces of light, space and object, and some do it by turning their art into an ongoing science experiment that requires a deft understanding of materials and their physical properties.

Colter, 2008 by William Hundley

Contender William Hundley aligns such forces, using photography to capture ordinary objects, floating and bloated -- likely lifted by much more complex staging than is visible to the viewer's eye. There are plenty of visual puns; Hundley's white masses meets other white objects (a colt, a bride, a van) that are identifiable yet in many ways anonymous themselves.

Many of the submitted images come from the series Entoptic Phenomena, a natural occurrence described as "visual effects whose source is within the eye itself." Like optical illusions, the experience of the phenomena observed can't be shared with others because it is due to physical distortions in one's eye—except, in Hundley's case, they can. He makes the entoptic outward-facing, so the illusion of floating, morphing masses that appear to defy gravity is shared, and recorded.

Dandelion Clothesline, Santiago, Chile by William Lamson

Hundley's work draws comparison to 20x200 trickster and photographer, Wililam Lamson, who stages "interventions" with his surrounding environments that play with "ideas of power, control, and human agency." Like Hundley, Lamson uses simple objects like balloons, kites, bananas and balls to demonstrate that yes, nature on it's own is truly remarkable, but nature with the interventions of humans, can elucidate the tensions that exist between materials as they are manipulated into a new man-made balance.

A few months ago Associate Director of Jen Bekman Gallery, Jeffrey Teuton, sent over the work of Chicago-based photographer Adam Ekberg, whose work is filled with refracted rainbows, lens distortions, and other shifts of nature that shoot bursts of light or emit smoke into landscapes and ordinary interiors. The aberrations are a playful announcement of his presence within the frame—a self-portrait through effect rather than cause.

All three artists use the environment as a reference point to work from, recognizing the textures, colors and a basic physicality of their backdrops as tools to work from instead of to work around. From there, all that must be done is to convince you that they know how to defy gravity.

You can see more work by William Hundley on his website.