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While some people look up into the night sky and wonder what’s out there, Guy Pignolet, an 81-year-old space educator, can be confident that he will one day be part of the answer. After he dies, Mr. Pignolet plans to have his ashes launched into space.

Kathy Ryan, the director of photography for The New York Times Magazine, had heard about Mr. Pignolet and his intentions through a relative. When editors at the magazine decided to focus this weekend’s issue on space, she knew where to start.

While much of the rest of the Space Issue focuses on technology, Ms. Ryan thought a story about those with plans like Mr. Pignolet’s would “bring it down to earth, emotionally,” she said.

Ms. Ryan learned he was using a company called Celestis for his post-mortem scheme. Amy Kellner, a senior photo editor for the magazine, contacted the company in August and assembled a roster with a mix of other people who, while still living on the planet, had signed up to include a vial of their remains on a rocket to be launched into space (and were willing to share their stories, Ms. Kellner said).

The idea was to create a collection of portraits of these space-bound subjects. Ms. Ryan knew that photographer Dina Litovsky, a frequent contributor to the magazine, would have the right eye. “Dina’s celestial lighting would give it just a slight subliminal otherworldliness,” she said of her thinking at the time. But Ms. Litovsky was headed to Japan in October and wouldn’t be able to travel around the world to shoot the subjects in their homes in places like Reunion Island, in the Indian Ocean, and Topeka, Kan.

“I said ‘I’d love to, but I can’t do it,’ ” Ms. Litovsky recalled in an interview. But after sleeping on the idea, she emailed Ms. Ryan a question: What if we do it remotely?

What is a remote photo shoot? Ms. Litovsky described a process where a photographer can connect their laptop to the subject’s smartphone and take a picture from continents away. “I’m using their phone as a remote camera,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s the future of photography, but it’s one of the futures of photography,” she said. She pitched the idea to Ms. Ryan, who jumped on board. (The magazine had found previous success with remote shoots during the first years of the coronavirus pandemic.)

Ms. Kellner got to work, hiring assistants who could work on site at each subject’s home. With Ms. Litovsky’s instructions, the assistant set up the lighting and held the subject’s smartphone, sometimes with the help of a second assistant or the subject’s partner. When she saw the right frame, Ms. Litovsky would click a button on her laptop, triggering the shutter on the smartphone.

This method allowed Ms. Litovsky to complete all eight shoots in about a week.

Not only did the remote photography save time (and reduce carbon dioxide emissions), Ms. Litovsky thinks the process resulted in success she wouldn’t have found in person. Typical shoots can be a one hour crunch, leaving little chance to get to know the subject. Working from afar required more communication with Guy Pignolet and the others, which helped her to understand what was behind their passion for space. The whole scene was looser, in a good way.

“The subjects feel less intimidated because the photographer is not in the room with them,” she said, adding: “There is just an iPhone, and it feels a little more relaxed.”

The final product is a collection of portraits of people who have a flair for the dramatic. “I went to the Celestis website and it said something like ‘Make your dream of going to space a reality.’ I thought it was funny, a little Monty Pythonish,” Ms. Litovsky said. Instead of the somber tone she’d originally envisioned for the pictures, she went for a “quirky” and “whimsical” aesthetic, “like sci-fi B movies and their vintage posters,” she said.

In The Times Magazine, the photographs are paired alongside reporting by Jon Mooallem that carries a matching sense of “humor and pathos,” Ms. Ryan said.

The article touches on important questions about contemporary life and death. “It’s very hard figuring out what to do with the remains when you lose a loved one,” Ms. Ryan said. “It’s not as simple as I think it was in the past, when people often had a religious ceremony or ritual that they’d know was part of their family tradition.”

Now, the night sky provides an answer for some adventurers at heart.

“They can send their ashes into space,” Ms. Ryan said. “There’s something beautiful about it.”