By the time I had the opportunity to travel to Israel with a group from my alma mater, I thought my photos of the Ark were done.  But this was Israel!  How could I pass up the opportunity to take photos for the book in the Holy Land?

I made this ark in a hotel near the Dead Sea.  Unlike the oceans and lakes I had tried to get ark photos in, the Dead Sea is extraordinarily buoyant because of the extreme salt content.  This means if a person goes to swim in the dead sea, they float much higher than they would in normal water.  Even people who would normally sink will float easily.  My balloons always float, but since they were in this special water, they floated so well that the ark would not stay upright!  I had to get a friend to hide behind the Ark and hold it up for me to keep it from tipping over.  It was a really fun spot to photograph!

Later that day, I carried the Ark with me as our group traveled to Masada.  Masada is a historic location on a tall plateau that was once one of Herod the Great’s magnificent homes.  Our group took a cable car to the top… which means I was in a crowded sky car in Israel holding a large balloon ark and a giant balloon rainbow.  I find this hilarious, though I’m not sure the professor leading our pilgrimage was quite as excited.  I got some great photos from the top of Masada with the Dead Sea off in the distance!  Before we came back down, we passed a group of Israeli students who loved the sculptures.  One stopped me for a photo, and we had a blast interacting.

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When I make a sculpture for the book I usually plan to make it only once.  Between the travel, time, and resources, it can be draining to do it again.  That said, I have made “the” ark for The Inflated Story of Noah five times.  The first was in Thomasville, Georgia in the halls of the church I grew up in.  The second was in Pensacola, FL.  The third was in Galveston, TX.  The fourth was on lake Wright Patman in Texarkana, TX.  The most recent attempt was in Israel.  Each attempt was special, and several of these show up in the book.

When I made the Ark at the beach in Galveston, years had passed since I first tried to create the book in the hall of my home church.  I was the youth minister at FBC Atlanta, TX, and I had finally decided to give the book real attention.  I made plans with the parents of a few of our guys to take them on an adventure and we set out for Galveston.

When we rolled into Galveston, the weather was icky.  Nevertheless, we checked into our hotel room and I set to work on Noah’s Ark 2.0.  On this attempt, I tried using larger balloons to make the ark, thinking it might look better.  It didn’t.  It made the ark even more flimsy, and the weather made the waters choppy and the arch enemy of balloons: wind.  I thought I was clever, because I bought a cheap remote-control boat to help tow the ark.  Epic Fail.  The remote controlled boat was never the same, and in the course of sloshing through the drizzle and photographing the ark in the ocean I managed to lose my cell phone and slice my hand on a rock.  On the bright side, between barrel rolls I managed to get a few decent shots of the ark that look like it is being ravaged by a storm (which it is!)  Plus, the trip was a great way to get to know some of the students in the youth group better.

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