Jon Carmichael

Why organisations work with Jon Carmichael

• He brings a single, verifiable feat that anchors every claim he makes about creative ambition: the 2017 “108” photograph, captured aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368 after the captain secured FAA approval to perform five 180-degree turns mid-flight.
• The story has been covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Inc., which gives the keynote external validation few inspirational speakers can match.
• He has presented at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester, two audiences with low tolerance for thin material, which signals he can hold a room of senior or technical attendees.
• His “Eclipse Mindset” gives sales conferences, innovation summits, and culture events a non-corporate frame for talking about ambition, alignment, and risk without sounding like internal-comms language.

Biography highlights

• Astrophotographer; sixteen years documenting corporate and political events.
• Photographed the 2017 total solar eclipse from 39,000 feet aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368, image titled “108”.
• Has spoken at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester to an audience of around 2,500.
• Eclipse work featured by Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc., and Weather.com.
• Visual storytelling engagements with Twitter, Dell and ESPN; collectors of his fine art work include Sir Elton John.
• Unveiled the “108” image at a Twitter company event at the invitation of Jack Dorsey.

Biography

In August 2017, a commercial Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to St. Louis made five 180-degree turns at 39,000 feet so a single passenger in seat 1A could photograph a total solar eclipse over the Snake River. That passenger had spent two years mapping flight paths against the moon’s shadow, persuading an airline and a captain to accept the risk, and securing FAA approval the morning of the flight. The resulting image, titled “108”, is the spine of Jon Carmichael’s keynote work.

Buyers do not commission him for technical photography. They commission him for what the project demonstrates about how teams attempt things that are not yet possible. The “Eclipse Mindset” he draws from the story is a practical frame, not a metaphor: identify the constraint, recruit unlikely partners, accept that the plan will change in execution, and prepare so that when conditions narrow to a two-minute window, the team can act.

His credibility for serious audiences comes from where the work has been received. The image was covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. and Weather.com. He was invited to present at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium, with the talk broadcast to other NASA centres, and at TEDxManchester to roughly 2,500 attendees. Jack Dorsey invited him to unveil the photograph at a Twitter company event.

For sales conferences, innovation kick-offs and culture moments where the brief is to lift the room without resorting to standard motivational fare, Carmichael offers a verifiable feat, a named project, and a usable frame, anchored by a story that audiences can recall and repeat months later.

Key speaking topics

• The Eclipse Mindset
• Creativity and perspective shift
• Bold execution under constraint
• Visual storytelling
• Innovation through ambition
• Team alignment around a high-stakes vision

Ideal for

• Sales conferences and annual kick-offs seeking a non-corporate opening or closing keynote
• Innovation, R&D, and product leadership offsites
• Culture, brand and marketing events
• CMOs and creative leadership audiences

Audience outcomes

• A specific story they can quote, with named brands and dates, to anchor internal conversations about ambition
• A practical frame (“Eclipse Mindset”) for identifying which constraints are real and which are inherited
• Renewed appetite for projects that require unlikely partners and mid-execution adjustment
• A reminder that bold work is rarely solo: the eclipse image required an airline, a captain, a regulator, and years of preparation