Seven years into his career as a newspaper photographer, Reidar Hahn had grown tired of hustling at all hours of the day and night.
"I was doing sports, chasing ambulances, chasing firetrucks. I was also responsible for a fashion section. I did everything," Hahn told Business Insider.
So when he heard about a job opening for a photographer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) nearly three decades ago — then home of the planet's most powerful atom smasher, the Tevatron — he applied.
A little while later, he was hired at the Batavia, Illinois, government laboratory, where he got a front-row seat as the lab's renowned physicists confirmed the existence of dark energy, identified what was then the farthest-away object ever observed, and constructed massive, complex experiments unlike anything else in the world.
Hahn has been shooting at the lab full-time since 1987, prompting Symmetry Magazine, a publication funded by the Department of Energy, to dub him "the physics photographer".
Business Insider recently caught up with Hahn and asked him to share a few of his 29 favorite shots from the past 29 years of his career.
Disclosure: The author of this post held a summer internship with the Fermilab communications office in 2006.
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"I've been taking pictures since I was about 8 years old," says Hahn.
"When I was a newspaper photographer I always liked coming to [Fermilab] on assignment. "
"There was always something new on the horizon, some new solution to a big problem."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider