Mike is one of the band photographers for the UCF Marching Knights. This is his sixth year photographing for the band. He started when his daughter, Mariel, was a freshman at UCF. She still attends the games and helps her dad with photography.
Photography is a hobby for Mike and he takes theater photos for theaters in the Central Florida area. When not taking photos as a hobby, Mike is writing software for applications such as 3D viewing and data collection from photography in the field of photogrammetry. Lately he has been involved with a project to add real-time augmented reality data to drone video from a GIS database.
Mike worked the last 22 Space Shuttle missions with NASA to map and measure thermal protection tile damage on the Shuttle during flight. The software was also used to map the surface of Mars from several of the rovers. Work with upcoming flights involve the positioning of cameras on the bottom of several landers in order generate 3D video during landing and then to perform mapping after touchdown.
Mike says that the pregame activities for the UCF Knights and Marching Knights is as exciting as any rocket launch.
Photo by Bob Maret.