IOAA 2019 interview

I started out as an amateur astronomer early in my teenage years. I was still living with my parents when I received my first telescope. This interest of mine accompanied me, though with changing intensity, until my early thirties, when I bought my first equipment for astrophotography. It was then that I realized that nature photography, which I had already come to master, and the observation of space can be combined in one wonderful hobby.

Before taking up this hobby at the first sight of astrophotos, people should let it sink in that this branch of photography does not yield quick returns. You really must work hard to excel. One single photo takes many, many hours to produce, and you need to acquire a variety of skills before even beginning, which in turn takes patience, resolution, and even a kind of professional humility. This is a delightful activity, but it comes with a price – to be paid in advance. However, if you are willing to see astrophotography as a profound engagement for even a lifetime, letting go of the pace of today’s social sites, then you will not measure this activity by the 10 to 20 photos you take in a year. Then you will understand that this activity, with all the fiddling around under the dome of the sky, and with all the different phases of image processing, it is a very complex and at the same time a genuinely rewarding engagement. It slows you down compared to today’s standards, but that’s fine.
In addition, I strongly recommend assembling the first equipment only after thorough legwork and assessment. It takes a substantial investment, so there should be no rush; the tools we buy are supposed to serve us for long years to come.

Pride is not the best word for how I feel about my photos. Memories, impressions, and experiences matured during production, or mere fragments of thoughts are much more likely attached to them than pride. This is because, as I mentioned, it takes up to 20–50 hours to produce a photo. And such a long time brings about a lot of events and experiences relating to that photo, be it a failure or a success. Therefore, I have very strong emotional attachment to my earliest serious images, or the themes captured at my first Namibian astronomical expedition, where every picture evokes the breathtaking miracle of the sky at the Tropic of Capricorn that I saw for the first time. But the hardships also contribute to a photo with content: the southern Milky Way mosaic produced after the many troubles of my third trip to Africa also speaks volumes to me.

This hobby has provided me with much appreciation in the last 10 years, for which, of course, I am grateful. However, I have come to see the value of these awards – or more appropriately, the value of competitions and accolades in general – in a different light. As of today, I find the excitement of working under the sky and the thrill of developing new photos more rewarding than any recognition for my results. If I still had to single out one of them, that would be, without doubt, my earliest international success: in 2012, I was awarded the Best Newcomer prize by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, at the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest. I had applied for this prestigious competition with my simple equipment and with the nothing-to-lose attitude of an underdog. Never had a Hungarian astrophotographer been rewarded at this competition before, so I was following the grand prize-giving ceremony like an outsider enthusiast – online, from home. Then suddenly I heard my name, and my photo being praised… It was as if the world was turning around me; at once, I became a member of a club I had never imagined joining. It meant a lot to me that the evaluation highlighted the achievement of the artistic quality in spite of the simple equipment. To me, in astrophotography, the value of creating photos is also important – in addition to the scientific work –, so this was not just a huge honor but a confirming feedback, which determined the basic values of my later work as well.

A personal aspect is that I do not regard the miracle of space as an end in itself. For me, it points to Someone, who is even more astonishing than this impressive, almost infinite universe. Moreover, in today’s increasingly alienating world, the magnificence of the night-time cosmos draws me close to nature. And it does so while at the same time making me re-evaluate my role because of the sheer size. The size of the ego, in sight of such a grand and pulsating universe, shrinks by comparison. And I think that is a very healthy effect…

Aerial photography attracts me – as does astrophotography – with the opportunity to show themes that go totally unnoticed, or are noticed differently, in everyday life. Astrophotos bring into sight a host of distant objects that escape the naked eye. As for the drone, it captures well-known themes, but from a vantage point that is otherwise inaccessible for us. I find this genuinely exciting. In addition, aerial photography attracts me – again, as does astrophotography – with its promise to unravel some visual tension from an apparently uneventful topic. A string of stars, a well-composed image of a nebula, or a properly captured galaxy cluster gives you the ability to display visual dynamics. I refer to what I am looking for, either in space or in the air, as a kind of motionless motion. With the drone, I consciously aim at taking minimalist photos but at the same time applying dynamics that will carry the viewer away. The two worlds of astrophotography and aerial photography are akin in this regard too.

I am primarily a deep space photographer, so I focus on planets during my visual observations only. My answer is Saturn, hands down. When I first saw it in my small telescope in the early nineties – scoping out the sky at a cold dawn, together with my later-to-be wife –, I was thrilled by its beauty. I found it fascinating, and that is still the case, that from the Earth, a tiny human with an even smaller telescope can see something that dwarfs him by comparison. What appears to be only one of the brighter celestial bodies, gains expanse in the telescope. That planet, with the ring encircling it, was a decisive experience. Today, in my own observatory, with much larger telescopes, I regularly relive that same sense of wonder. Both towards this beautiful child of creation and towards its Creator.