Photographer Travels the World Taking Pictures of Abandoned Airplane Wrecks

For his project “Happy End,” German photographer Dietmar Eckell has travelled all over the world to find and photograph abandoned airplane wreckages with positive endings. That last part may seem like a paradox, but all of the 15 wreckages Eckell has shot actually do have happy endings: no one on board died, and they were all rescued from the remote locations where they crash landed.

Now, after completing this mammoth project and producing some extraordinary pictures, he wants to put together a coffee table photo book that tells and (obviously) illustrates these stories, and he’s turned to crowdfunding site Indiegogo for help.

Getting a print run of a high-quality coffee table photo book isn’t cheap, and so Eckell is asking people to donate and help him reach at least $4,000 to get started. In exchange, he’s offering everything from access to a 15-episode “Making Of” series, to the book itself, to museum-quality fine art prints of your choice at incredible prices.

Here are just a few of the 50+ photos that will illustrate his book:

With 43 days left, Eckell has already reached almost $3,000, so we’re not concerned that he’ll miss his goal (or even his stretch goal of $6,000), but if you want to get in on the discounted action, sooner is better than later. There are still 29 “early bird” deals left between the book and the book+acknowledgement packages, and those probably won’t last long.

If you want to support Eckell, be it with $9 in exchange for access to the “Making Of” series, or $800 in exchange for 100 x 150cm (~40 x 60in) limited edition, museum-quality print, you can head over to Indiegogo by clicking here. Alternatively, if you want to see more pictures from Eckell’s Happy End project before you decide, you can check them out over on his website.