Chandresh is a Citizen Scientist with NASA and helps the scientific community investigate phenomena in the night sky through his footage and photographs. In this story, we learn tips on how to take an astrophoto, see some before/after shots taken in ice caves, and get to know more about his involvement in NASA.
The origin of my curiosity for learning and exploring the natural world goes way back to my formative days of growing up in India. My grandparents lived up in the mountains of South India’s Western Ghats region where coffee plantations bordered the numerous forest lands. Each year I would eagerly await the end of the school semester and would look forward to getting sent off to my grandparents for the summer holidays. These free days were spent exploring the coffee plantations and an occasional trip into the forest where my senses were awakened by being one with the sights, sounds, and smells of the pristine environment surrounding me. Evenings were spent sitting around the warmth offered by coal-fired “kendas”, listening to numerous stories my grandparents would narrate of wildlife encounters and chatter about beautiful local spots to visit.
Spending weeks like this, holiday after holiday, instilled a fondness for exploring new places, learning about new cultures and people, and traveling in general. India as a country is a myriad mix of different cultures and languages and offers a lot of opportunities to travel and explore new environments. Much later, when I moved to the Canadian Rockies, my deep love for exploring was rekindled, this time accompanied by a desire to capture the beauty of the places I got to see.
I worked as an oilfield engineer as my first job when I moved to Canada and one night on the way to an oil rig located in the remote part of Alberta, I noticed a strange light that appeared to be moving across the night sky. Once I pulled over and switched off the vehicle headlights, I realized that I was observing the Aurora Borealis/Northern Lights. It was a mesmerizing and fascinating experience to see the lights dance across the night sky. For those few moments, it felt like time had stood still and I was being transported to another dimension where wave after wave of the lights’ motion was surrounding me, seamlessly dancing random patterns and colors across the night sky. I wanted to see more of this fascinating phenomenon and while I was researching travel trips for the Northern Lights, I came across a few pictures of the Milky Way galaxy. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that these images were taken on a DSLR and not via telescopes as I had imagined. I had an entry-level DSLR and a kit lens at that time and decided to venture out at night and experiment with my gear to try and capture the night sky. This ignited a burning desire to learn the art of astrophotography.
In hindsight, I am glad that I picked up astrophotography, as it taught me everything I needed to know about operating a camera and lens in fully manual mode and taught me how to balance and capture light (rather lack of it at night) and not rely on the camera’s auto mode. This has made the transition to shooting other genres like landscapes etc. much easier. Ice caves and winter scapes in the Canadian Rockies are now some of my favorite subjects.
The opportunity to be a Citizen Scientist with NASA and help the scientific community in gaining knowledge of phenomena in the night sky added an additional dimension to my photography. In 2016, photographs capturing a strange form of Auroras from the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook community (I am a part of this community) picked the interest of the scientific community. STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) is a mysterious phenomenon that occurs as a purple/pink/white light ribbon in the Western Sky and sometimes extends as an arc across the East-West sky. My first time witnessing STEVE, knowing that only a handful of people on Earth had seen it at that time, was quite special. I felt like one of those early explorers who were about to set sail on a journey across the open seas looking at a phenomenon unraveling in front of me that had absolutely no explanation at that point in time.
The phenomenon and the photographs collected led NASA to establish a citizen science program called Aurorasaurus, wherein photographers can upload real-time observations of STEVE and this would give the scientists the ability to study and gather research on the phenomenon utilizing the various satellites in the vicinity. A documentary called Chasing Steve (www.chasingsteve.com) captures the story of how two different communities working together via citizen science were able to quickly develop a strong understanding in a relatively short time of something that was completely unknown at that time. Numerous photographs captured by me were featured in the documentary and used by the scientists in furthering the knowledge of STEVE and also showcasing the phenomenon in various global scientific events. I am currently an ambassador for NASA’s Aurorasaurus program and continue to provide images of STEVE that help scientists decode STEVE. In addition to STEVE, another Citizen Science program that I have become involved in attempts to further the knowledge of another celestial phenomenon called Noctilucent Clouds.
Now, these are all very special phenomena, but also the “simple” night sky keeps amazing me. The first time I stargazed in a Bortle Class 1 sky around the US-Canada border was a memorable lifetime experience. These class 1 skies can’t be found everywhere; Banff National Park is one of my favorite spots for capturing astrophotographs for example, and here you can find mostly Bortle Class 3-4 skies. Although there is some light pollution, it’s still a great place for capturing either the milky way galaxy or the Northern Lights. A lot of the stunning spots can be accessed without much difficulty via easy-to-park-and-shoot parking lots, or by hikes, if you are looking for some solitude.
My very first milky way galaxy photo was taken by Vermillion Lakes (in Banff National Park), overlooking the iconic Mount Rundle. This has become somewhat of a sacred spot for me. It has become a tradition that I kickstart each milky way photography season at the very spot I shot my first milky way photograph. Over the years and after numerous visits, I have become well acquainted with how the light behaves given the various conditions. The biggest challenge every year, apart from braving some of the harshest winter conditions, is to create something unique at one of the most photographed locations in Banff National Park.
There is one photograph in particular that is close to my heart, not only because of the location which over the years has offered plenty of fond memories for me but because of the particular shot itself which is also featured on the SONY Alpha Universe Website. Visualizing your shot and tons of planning are indispensable for creating good astrophotography. After having researched a few apps, I had the knowledge that the Milky Way core would present itself over Mount Rundle for a period of 30 minutes starting at 4:30 a.m. The cloud cover over Mount Rundle was not looking promising and the predicted temperatures of -20 Celsius and fair winds made it hard to get out of bed, but I took the risk in hopes of finding a narrow window of ideal conditions. I chose to bring my Sony Alpha 7R III due to its high ISO and low noise performance and the Sony 24mm f/1.4 G Master as my lens of choice, as this is the perfect focal length that accentuates Mount Rundle and is wide enough to fill the rest of the composition with the night sky while still having room for some reflections if open waters should present itself.
I left Calgary at 2 am; concentration was needed to keep the vehicle on the icy roads and the cloud cover made me wonder whether I should better turn around. Once I arrived, I was the only one there and the clouds covered most of the sky. Together with the strong wind, I started to think if I had it all wrong. However, the sight of open water gave me hope and with the image I had envisioned in mind, I decided to play the waiting game. I scouted out a few compositions and found this spot on the ice shelf that was close to the open water; it offered the best angle for the reflecting mountain. I set up my tripod just a few inches off the ground so as to highlight the reflections better.
For astrophotography, you manually need to dial in lens focusing and camera settings. This gives an individual greater flexibility for creative expression. The camera I brought with me, the Alpha 7R III, has some important features for the two most critical aspects of astrophotography – composition and focusing. These two aspects cannot be changed in post-processing and having the features of Bright Monitoring and Focus Peaking significantly helps in getting these two aspects right on location. I used the 12x focus magnification and the focus peaking option to ensure my stars had tack sharp focus. Then I reduced the tension on the ball head and used Bright Monitoring to level the horizon and make subtle changes to the composition. After having tried a few different exposure values, I found that 15 seconds was ideal for balancing the amount of light and not having star trails. I had quite some light pollution to work with for my foreground so I stopped down my lens to f/2.0, and ISO 3200 was ideal for a clean, noiseless image. Once I was ready with my settings, I moved my exposure dial to Bulb mode and plugged in an external remote to avoid any camera vibrations.
As everything was set, I just had to wait for those few moments of sky brilliance of clouds alignment and no wind. Another photographer showed up and set up on the ice entering my composition… Though I didn’t mind this as I like to add a human element to my astrophotography. I had decided not to place myself in the composition this time because the sound of breaking ice that frequently disturbed the silence of the night concerned me. After about a half hour of waiting, the stars aligned for this shot, the cloud cover had disappeared significantly and the outline of the Milky Way was clearly visible. The few lingering clouds added to my composition of dissipating the light pollution and illuminating Mount Rundle. The human element was still there, adding to my composition. The moment to take the shot had finally presented itself! The final image was edited in Lightroom to apply lens correction and finished in Photoshop to bring out a bit of contrast and details.
There are several strategies and tools to create a great astrophotophy, and there are several qualities that make up a great astrophotographer. It’s a combination of gear, knowledge, and skills that help you achieve impeccable results. Based on several years of doing what I do and trying to get better, I can share the following tips:
Astrophotography is one genre where a lot of planning prior to the shot is critical to ensure success. Over a period of time, I have started to become familiar with the real estate of the night sky and where objects appear year-round. I believe this really helps during the numerous daytime scouting missions to visualize and make a mental note of how the night sky will appear over the foreground. There are numerous apps online that can help with this process as well.
Learning about camera settings and the various techniques and also keeping up with equipment developments is an evergreen learning experience. Understanding how to balance your camera settings of exposure, aperture, and ISO given the environmental conditions is critical to capturing high-quality RAW data. A lot of the celestial elements have science associated with their occurrence. Learning and developing a knowledge of these events go a long way in enhancing the probability of the right time and right place scenarios.
Astrophotography at numerous times could end up being an exercise of chasing clouds. The pursuit of capturing perfection in your images can also turn out to be a frustrating experience at times. On numerous occasions I have arrived on location to find some of the worst conditions for photography, stuck around a bit while my patience is being put to the test, and seen my luck change, resulting in some great memories and photographs. A little bit of patience goes a long way.
I cannot stress enough that the process of planning-research-execution is vital for a successful mission. Knowing when to go and where to go is just half the battle. Once on location, being switched on and paying attention to details is the other half of the battle to walk away with high-quality RAW data. I prefer to focus on these on-location processes and capture the best image in the camera vs relying on post-editing processes.
The holy grail of astrophotography is to balance the details of the night sky and have no noise in your images. Developing the knowledge of your equipment’s capabilities and knowing its limitations goes a long way. Investing money into a good-quality tripod is highly recommended. Lens technology progress is much slower compared to camera sensor technologies, so in terms of camera bodies there is always an upgraded option available and I prefer spending more money on glass technology vs camera sensors or new camera bodies.
Photography to me – above all – is about capturing light and perfecting compositions. When I am out exploring and taking pictures, I am living in the present and reacting to my surrounding environment. It’s almost like time stays still and the past and the future do not matter; when I get into that zone I subconsciously feel the connection to the scene and it draws me to that frame that I want to convey to my audience. I start to notice the various elements in the composition and how they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This process also forces me to consider the various compositional techniques at my disposal that help me highlight a specific detail in my photograph that I want to bring to the attention of my audience.
Some of the techniques that I often consider are foreground and background separation, highlighting either the foreground or background utilizing bulbous wide-angle lenses, background blur via shallow depth of field, or having a specific element in the foreground. I prefer to have a human element in my foreground composition and I am always thinking of where to place the human element considering the light conditions and techniques such as negative spaces, leading lines, sub-frames etc. in my foreground. I prefer to dwarf the human element to signify the vastness of our environment, and it also helps the audience establish an emotional connection to the scene. The latter helps instill a thought process of environmental conservation among the audience.
One of the tag lines I use for my photography is “It’s not what you see, but how you see it”. As a photographer, it’s my style to focus on those simple beauty and finer details in the composition that often gets overlooked. This approach has helped me to develop a keen eye for details; be it an astrophoto, a shot of an ice cave, or a sunrise/sunset image capturing a landscape.
When it comes to sunset shots, I love the September months in Alberta. For some reason, during this time of the month, there is always some interesting mix of clouds and light conditions. On one particular day, I decided to head out to a local hotspot called Two Jack Lake in Banff, after doing some research on cloud cover and checking on a sunset app. Sunrises and sunsets, in my opinion, are always hard to plan because it’s always a guessing game of what conditions will prevail once you get to the location. Upon arrival, I noticed a fair amount of low and medium clouds and the sun was just starting to hide behind the mountains. As I have shot often at this location, I had a fairly good idea of the composition I wanted. I was going to introduce the human element (if the need arose) on the middle rock that was protruding out and this formed the basis of my composition. The rocks also acted as a leading line into the human element. For this shot, I set up my tripod lower than usual, more focused on the human element and after a few adjustments, I was happy with my composition. The sun reached below the horizon and the worrying factor for me was that the low and medium clouds were more monochromatic and the sunset colors were lacking. Given the lackluster color and the fair movement of the clouds, I decided to try out some long exposure and put a 6-stop ND filter and 0.3 Stop soft grad filter. I then proceeded to bump up my exposure and opened up the aperture a bit and decided to play the waiting game. It was almost an hour after sunset, almost approaching the end of nautical twilight, did the clouds light up for a brief period. I placed myself in the frame and it felt like an eternity to sit still without showing any motion until I could hear the camera shutter.
The final result is something that I will always cherish, as such moments of nature’s brilliance are generally far few for the offering. This was one stubborn and strange sunset in that the high clouds lit up well after sunset and substantiates my school of thought that a little patience goes a long way in walking away with memorable shots like these. Persistence pays in the end. Photographing nature and chasing the light, you realize that nothing is perfect and your best plans can quickly fall apart in nature. It’s a constant and endless process of trial and error to get things going in the right direction. It’s those failures that lead up to your success and makes those success moments so precious and worthy moments to live for.
Having spoken about astrophotography and sunset images, there is one last subject left that I love to shoot in particular: ice caves. Chasing ice caves in Alberta is more of the wild west compared to more commercial trips, say in Alaska or Iceland; hence it’s a lot more rewarding when you scout out and find these hidden gems in the Canadian Rockies.
To take one specific image as an example, I would say it has been a challenging but rewarding experience to get the shot I had visualized. A year prior to this photo, I had come across this big beautiful cave and was instantly in awe of its beautiful blue color. The effort needed to get to this cave is quite significant: it’s a 20+ km hike generally in temperatures below -20 degree Celsius weather.
The next year that I visited the cave, I was quite surprised to see how much it had changed from the previous visit. The entrance to the cave had opened up due to the excessive melting of ice, the inner chamber had also opened up into a massive chamber and the composition as seen in the image was only possible due to the melting of the insides of the cave. A few scattered ice blocks that were remnants of the collapsed roof had collected on the ice cave floor and this set up the basis for my shot. I wanted to capture the beauty of the glacier blue and also wanted to highlight the vulnerability of the ice cave due to fast melting glaciers.
After setting up my tripod low at the very back of the cave and moving it a few times, I was happy at this particular spot that had the leading lines to the pile of ice debris and the light entering the mouth of the cave created a bit of negative space. My friend had brought along a dress that perfectly blended with the surrounding ice. I had her stand at a slightly off-center spot, ignoring the rule of thirds as this had the best impact in drawing focus to my human element in the composition due to the sub-framing of the negative space. I then had her turn sideways and had her arms placed by her sides with her head looking down at the ice debris. This creates the vulnerability effect and also conveys to the audience a feeling of taking stock of what’s left of the melting ice debris. The setting sun enhanced my human element and the intensity of the light entering the mouth of the cave illuminated the cave details rather nicely: the hoar frost build-up in the cave roof, the shiny diamond look, and the light play which added contrast to the leading lines. This was a perfect moment in time when all the elements came together to create balance and harmony. All that was left was to take the shot. Those few moments of nature’s brilliance captured in images such as this one, make those long hikes in brutally cold temperatures worthwhile. The long hike back in frigid temperatures and darkness was definitely worth it to see the finished image after editing, which didn’t take much time.
I focus my process more on capturing the best quality RAW data, so I try to capture something almost close to my final product on location. Most of my edits are basic changes in Lightroom in terms of adjusting white balance, minimal adjustments to exposure/contrast, highlights/shadows, and whites/blacks. I apply lens corrections in Lightroom and sometimes use a bit of sharpening in Photoshop. I also apply my logo in Photoshop. Below is a comparison of an unedited ice cave RAW file vs a processed final image.
Whether I create for myself or for others, I follow the same principles. I have always looked at photography as my passion hobby and tried to keep things simple and not let the influence of other factors sacrifice the passion in me. This doesn’t mean I don’t think about the future of my photography and how to maintain it sustainable, I find it important though to always stay close to the core values that drive me and what feels good to me in order to deliver the best work. This also includes stepping out of my comfort zone and doing things I haven’t done before – and sometimes the trigger comes from others through particular client requests.
There are two gigs that I can proudly look back at. For the first one, I was contacted by a reputed local Calgary corporate client to supply numerous very large prints of my work. Initially, I was hesitant to take on this gig, but it turned out to be a stepping stone to a lot of new opportunities. I learned a lot about the printing aspect and seeing my prints on the wall and their meaning and appreciation from the clientele gave me a new perspective on the impact of my work. The learnings have led to me being cognizant of large prints while dealing with my camera settings, especially for astrophotography. This also led to my photography taking wings as a business entity and the revenues earned have been able to support three charities over the years.
The second gig I am proud of is being an ambassador for NASA’s Aurorasaurus citizen science project. This has shown me how two different passionate groups with completely opposite perspectives can work collaboratively in helping each other achieve objectives. The citizen Science aspect has given me another dimension to my photography in learning the science behind some of the beautiful phenomenons that I capture on camera. Astrophotography on its own has also had a huge impact on me. Astrophotography for me has been a humbling and character-building experience. When you are out in the darkness, often in remote places that have a minimal human impact, one can’t help but feel how insignificant humans are (contrasting to our egos that humans are a special life-form) and for that matter our solar system as compared to the vastness of our milky way galaxy, let alone the universe. Astrophotography has taught me to value time and understand that each one of us has a limited amount of time on this planet and that we should be kind and emphatic to each other and to other living creatures and also use the diminishing time sensibly.
There is so much we can learn from experiences, from the world around us, and from each other. One aspect that I have loved about photography is that of meeting people and community building. I currently organize a bi-monthly meet-up in the Calgary area, that brings together photographers with the knowledge of auroras that share this knowledge with the community via presentations and talks. I will in the future continue to share the knowledge and skills gained in the form of formal workshops and focus on helping people realize their dreams of exploring and experiencing firsthand some of nature’s finest moments on offer. These steps will further solidify my photography mission of: EXPLORE → CREATE → INSPIRE → EDUCATE → CONSERVE
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