Contributors

Steve Double (Pinball Restoration photos) has been working as a professional photographer for 21 years. Some highlights are having 90 seconds to photograph Bill Gates, waiting six hours for the Spice Girls, being chided for lateness by Public Enemy, drinking caipirinhas with Nick Cave, blagging an upgrade off Richard Branson, spending five days in a van with Nirvana, and never having to wear a tie. He recently acquired a digital back for his Hasselblad and now embraces techniques from Polaroid image transfer and emulsion lift to completely filmless shooting. He is old enough to know better.

Mikey Sklar (Making It) likes to blow things up. It started innocently enough just placing

Black Cat firecrackers in dog poop and running. This technique basically covers you in crap. Twenty years later he has created an open source fire-shooting trampoline. When he is not thinking about fire, his time is well-spent programming microcontrollers, cooking up vegan meals, and watching how-to documentaries. He is presently building a self-balancing electric vehicle and a bed-and-breakfast out of garbage.

Roger Ibars (Toy Gun Alarm Clock) remembers: “Once when I was a kid, my dad could not open a door. The key somehow got jammed into the lock and he tried everything ... twisted it, banged it, pushed it. Nothing. I was 3 years old and I remember I had a strange feeling. I felt I could open that door! … So I waited until my dad left, I put my hands on the key and ... magic! I opened it! This picture shows the outfit I was wearing that day.”

Larry Cotton (Small-Batch Coffee Roaster) is a “musical, energetic, creative, happily married, semi-retired power tools engineer-turned-math teacher” (try saying that in one breath), lives in New Bern, N.C., with his wife, Sylvia, and “one irrationally exuberant dog.” He is a compulsive tinkerer who is currently playing with “weird clocks based on an el-cheapo time-base device” and who loves lasagna, bright colors, and his 1950s vintage Shopsmith. His dream project is the “Pixbox,” a hardware USB digital photo editor loaded with switches and knobs, a randomize button for creative types, unlimited undo, and in Google’s honor, an “I Feel Lucky” button. It doesn’t exist yet, but Larry is open to collaboration.

Brian Biggs (Flipbook illustrations) was born in Little Rock, Ark., in 1968, the son of a Portuguese train bandit and a mystical one-armed sailor with secret powers. He grew up mostly in Pasadena, Texas, where he learned to talk to cows. He went to Parsons School of Design with the mistaken notion that he would be a magazine art director. Later, he realized that he was not cut out for regular jobs. Brian now lives in Philadelphia, where he rides bikes, draws robots, plays the accordion, teaches illustration, and hangs out with his two kids (who are magical raccoons and know how to fly). Visit him at MrBiggs.com.

Adrienne Foreman (MAKE web intern) is a Jill of some trades, and master of none. She assists with web production, helps keep the MAKE website up and running smoothly, and adds the entire Table of Contents online for each issue. A college student without a major, she generally has a hard time making up her mind. She is currently in the middle of a love affair with the color green and chocolate-covered PayDay bars.

Simply put, Adam Savage (Moldmaking) makes stuff. He’s constructed everything from spaceships to Buddhas, puppets to rifles, sculptures to toys. His fascination with creating things started when he began building his own toys at age 5. In addition to co-hosting Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, Adam also teaches advanced model making in Industrial Design departments and somehow finds time to devote to his own art. His sculptures have been showcased in more than 40 shows in San Francisco, New York and Charleston, W. V.

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