About
the Artist
Hello and thanks for visiting my site. I'm a professional
photographer, cinematographer, solids modeler, graphics artist,
photoshop expert, broadcast engineer, adventurer, traveller, foodie,
recovering 3D animator and occasional web coder.
I hope you enjoy my photos as much as I enjoyed
taking them, along with all the other content on this site.
If you would like to get ahold of me, drop me an
email at mm@mikemassee.com.
You'll get an authentication email to verify your identity
the first time you email. Be sure to check your spam folder
if you don't get the initial email.
A (Not-So) Brief Bio
I grew up in San Jose, CA. In high school
I was a theater geek, mostly doing lighting design. In college
I worked at a PBS TV station as a master control operator in one
of the last all-manual broadcast master control suites in the
United States.
After that I began to work in the station's production
studio as a freelance technical director and cameraman, most notably
for "The Computer Chronicles", a nationally syndicated
PBS television program. Hosted by Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles
was the world's most popular television program on personal computer
technology during the height of the PC revolution. The series
had a weekly television audience of over two million viewers.
After I graduated from college with a degree in
Broadcast Engineering, I joined a young post production and animation
company and saw it grow from 3 people to over 20 employees housed
in an entire floor of production suites. I served as CTO
and lead animator until departing in 1999. It was there that I
directed and co-animated the Rotary Rocket "Revolution to
Orbit" animation, which marked the beginning of my involvement
with the new space movement.
Small Business
Concurrent with my post production career, I and
two associates opened an international coffee shop, deli and art
gallery in Downtown San Jose's SOFA district. This would
be my first experience running a small business. The large,
airy space was host to poetry slams, bands, featured wired and
wireless internet access and had a worldly selection of coffees,
teas, pastries and sandwiches. Although the cafe was
only open for one year, the experience was invaluable and would
help us in future endeavors as small business owners. As
the former partners and still friends are fond of saying, "It
was still cheaper than an MBA from Stanford!"
Silicon Valley to Hollywood and Back Again
After leaving the post production firm, I moved
to Los Angeles to accept a position as effects animator at Digital
Domain, one of Hollywood's largest independent VFX facilities,
co-founded by director James Cameron and former ILM principal
Scott Ross. There I worked on photo-real computer animation
for commercial television clients such as Pontiac, American Express
and Auto Trader. mostly prime time and superbowl spots.
At the height of the tech boom in Silicon Valley,
I left Digital Domain to accept an invitation from a good friend
to return to the Bay Area and go to work for a company developing
a new interactive cable TV program guide for set top boxes.
The business was incubated on the historic SRI (Stanford Reaserch
Institute) campus in Menlo Park. There I helped create the GUI-look
for an interactive program guide employed in digital cable
set top boxes, along with training videos and other content. The company's
fortunes sank with the tech bust in 2001. In December of that year, I set
off for an unlikely spot at the western edge of the Mojave Desert.
Mojave and XCOR
In December of 2001 while still living in Palo Alto,
I received a phone call from a friend and client from the corporate
video days. From this call came the news that the erstwhile
Rotary Rocket Company down in Mojave, CA. was in a similiar predicament
as the company that I was working for. A splinter group
of extremely competent rocket engineering talent broke off to
start their own company, XCOR
Aerospace. With no money and scant angel funds to be
had during the post-9/11 depression, the then-scrappy startup created
a manned, flying rocket powered airplane (pictured above) in only
9 months from paper to first flight. The EZ-Rocket went
on to be the company's calling card, proving competency and allowing
them to raise funds. Since then we have built and flown a second rocket powered vehicle, completed many contracts for our customers and are now developing our suborbital spacecraft, the Lynx.
From the beginning, XCOR needed help with media
content creation, 3D visualization, onboard cameras, video documentation,
production, website design and photography. I was able to
fill all of these niches thanks to my varied career. I
had visited the small town of Mojave once before when shooting
for a Rotary Rocket production, and immediately fell in love with
the freedom and flexibility of a small town atmosphere. I
packed all of my belongings into a 15-foot U-Haul, moved to Mojave
and never looked back.
One of many photos of
SpaceShipOne
|
SpaceShipOne
To date, I have worked at XCOR for 9 years.
Around 2004, I took several years off to become a freelance
photographer, web and graphics designer, while retaining XCOR
as a client. it was during this time that I was introduced
to aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites. Burt
was getting ready to start flight testing his SpaceShipOne
project, which would go on to win the Ansari X-Prize as the first private
manned spacecraft. I redesigned the Scaled Composites
and SpaceShipOne websites. Together with Tonya Rutan, I designed and launched the rocketboosters
E-commerce website, which raised nearly half
a million dollars for local charities through sales of officially
licensed SpaceShipOne merchandise.
From 2001 onwards photography began to play a greater
role in my life as I started to photograph professionally. On
September 29, 2004 and October 04, 2004 I had back-stage access
to the SpaceShipOne flights and was able to photograph history in the
making. The SpaceShipOne images launched my professional
photography career and together with my XCOR photos have been
featured in major publications around the world including Smithsonian
Air and Space Magazine, Scientific American, Popular Science,
Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York
Times, Time Magazine, Wired, Nature, Space.com and many more.
My railroad photography has appeared in Trains, Railfan and Railroad (cover story, May 2009) and Live Steam & Outdoor Railroading (cover story, September / October 2010) as well as several calendars.
The Present
Today I am employed full time at XCOR Aerospace,
which is now an established small Aerospace company with over
30 employees. I have parlayed my 3D modelling skills from
my VFX days into solid and surface modelling for Aerospace applications,
helping to develop the airframe for XCOR's next generation suborbital
spacecraft. Mostly I work in Solidworks, and I still use Lightwave
for the pretty PR shots. For several years, I also ran
a sucessful side business, Mojave Air and Space Collectibles,
a descendant of The Rocketboosters. I occasionally pick
short term freelance design and photography projects which interest
me and do not interfere with my day job. In 2010 I shot, produced, edited and directed my first feature documentary video about a friends' amazing backyard railroad, and that video is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray from this website.
Hobbies and other interests
I was president of the Mojave Chamber of Commerce
for the 2007 calendar year and has served on the board of directors
for many years now. I am also past president and a current director of the Mojave Transportation Museum.
In my spare time I like to travel, photograph, eat
delicious food and meet interesting people. I like almost
every variety of music, collect film scores and am a fan of cinema
and symphony. I love stereo photography and cinematography (long before it became popular again) I enjoy
travel photography and fine art studio photography.
Running a miniature steam locomotive
|
I am reasonably fluent in PHP and MySQL and primarily
uses the languages to develop custom applications for my own websites,
in addition to several freelance projects I have completed for
others and XCOR.
Since I was young, I was bitten by the steam railroading
bug. I am a huge fan of steam locomotives and scenic railroads.
I have driven several full sized steam locomotives and my father and I have completed an Allen Models Chloe live steam engine. Through these
projects I am learning how machine metal, which helps me understand
materials properties and fabrication which in turn help my aerospace
modeling efforts. I am a fan of scale steam and park trains,
and love to photograph steam engines in winter snow.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert Heinlein
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