LIFE magazine returns to print this month after almost two decades. The magazine was started in 1936, and this revived version will launch a new Issue 1, a 250-page print edition out on November 23, with the theme of “Where Are We Now”.
“The theme of our first issue is “Where Are We Now?,” a window into an America that is searching for meaning: scientists and artists, entrepreneurs and athletes, children and octogenarians, coal miners and dronemakers. There are some famous people in the mix; most are not. See how much that difference matters. Our fascination comes from locating the ordinary in the extraordinary, and the extraordinary in the ordinary.”
One of the two cover stories features Alysa Liu, photographed by Spike Jonze. LIFE published this video where he explains how he photographed her. You can see all the photos and read the complete feature here.
Alysa Liu says that when skating feels great, everything else disappears and it's just her in a bubble where nothing else exists. For LIFE's first relaunch cover, Spike Jonze set out to photograph that feeling. In this film, Jonze breaks down two techniques he used to capture these photos. In the first, he paired a two-second exposure with a strobe that froze Liu mid-trick, then moved the camera to paint streaks of color from her dress. The second is a trick from his skateboarding photography days in the late '80s: firing the flash by hand, again and again, so an entire spin lands on a single frame. He calls them the “dream images of Alysa's inner world of skating."