'It's all about setting your mind to it'

It all started when my grandpa gave me an old Minolta camera that had been passed down from his father, as a gift for my birthday when I was 10. I started getting so excited about it that I instantly felt the urge to go outside and take my first shots. It wasn't the easiest hobby to take up when you are so little because I had to hold an old metallic 200mm lens attach to a rock solid body! I had always been passionate about nature, birds, plants and all sorts of creeping creatures and I attempted to capture and photograph everything that wiggled around. As time passed by and interests slightly shifted, my teenage years unconsciously -or not?- pulled me away from photography and I had never really touched a camera ever since. Until 2013! Who would have known that my so hectic teacher job in a little Danish province school allowed me to go out and take pictures? Besides my love for animals and plants, I also found a passion for grander things, like the night sky and the universe. I bought myself a new Canon EOS 70D camera along with some start-up kit lenses, and started shooting the night sky. 'Hmmmm not so easy', I realized, looking at my horrendous and underexposed first pictures. Good thing for me that we live in the information technology age and that I can find any tip I needed on the internet. I rapidly got the hang of it but needless to say that I went through a lot of challenges and made a bunch of mistakes at first. Not too hard now, you just need patience, a sturdy tripod, a timer remote and a lot of batteries! 

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'Visualizing the invisible and share it with the world...'

We are now in 2018 and four years after I started touching a camera again, it feels like I can't get my hands off it. It's an addiction. Especially when I get the rare occasion of a clear night sky or a solar storm! But I took the bull by the horns and I added to my collection an equatorial mount (for night sky objects tracking) and the new incredible 42 megapixels Sony alpha 7rII that allows me to shoot in 4K, a Sony a7s, a modded Canon 6D, along with a wide variety of objectives that are much better for astrophotos. However all of this is not 'just for the love of photography': I need to feel the connection with nature and consider my tiny place in the vastness of the universe. It's a way for me to keep myself grounded, humble, and somehow appreciative of my somewhat insignificant role in the course of the biological and astronomical cycle. 
My goal is to try and take incredible and unseen pictures, because I am always amazed at the small and big things that we don't really regard in our daily lives. Making gigantic tiny while making microscopic huge; 'Discover, visualize the cosmos' - here is my motto. I am mostly interested in landscape, astro, deep-sky, and macro photography, and I have also developed a passion for time-lapse, and especially astrolapse.  The purpose of my mission is also to educate myself first, while passing the knowledge and awareness down to other people. There are so many compelling and sensitive subjects at stake here: conserving our nature and the environment, protecting our precious ressources, fighting pollution (and especially light pollution), promoting space and atmospheric sciences and discoveries.
 

Self-portrait in the Atacama desert, Chile.

Chilean total solar eclipse, 2019

Working with visual science, my devotion goes to making the invisible visible through my lens to share it with the world. In many ways we have forgotten where we come from and how to really appreciate it. My work is a way for me to express myself and a hope to give back what our hectic lives have buried deep beneath cement and light pollution. Subsequently I am trying to develop new ways of visualizing our night sky using close-up views of the phenomena occurring in it (aurorae, noctilucent clouds, deep-sky objects, meteor shower, eclipses etc...) . The content that I work on encompasses mainly short weekly videos (time-lapse or real-time) about astro-events, but also bigger projects like themed documentary videos showcasing our world in a artistic and still scientific way. That goes without saying that I also love helping people and teach them what I know, so I started a series of tutorials that are step-by-step complimentary courses. 

I hope you enjoy browsing through my work as much as I enjoy this exciting profession! Don't hesitate to leave comments, to send me messages, to contact me for any question or request, or to find me on the social media (link in the tab bar below).

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The sky is (not) the limit!

Adrien Mauduit