Professionally, Łukasz Szuchalski is a qualified security officer with an Intervention Group at one of the local security companies. In his private life, he is Magda’s fiancé, the father of three children (youngest Agatka, Kuba and Zosia), and the owner of a female cat named Rysia. The greatest dream of this exceptionally talented photography enthusiast is to see and capture the Northern Lights in a photograph. The passion for photographing the starry sky is also an exercise in patience and strength of spirit. Astrophotography requires a great deal of time. Collecting 16 minutes of material takes several hours of work in the field, preferably in freezing weather. This is how the author of these beautiful photographs describes himself. Congratulations on your passion, and we invite you to view Łukasz’s photographs.
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“Stars have always been my passion; I could watch them for hours. That is why I would like to show people what most of them will never see. My passion quickly developed from astrophotography towards photographing virtually everything around me. Very quickly, the camera became an essential part of my equipment whenever I left home.
I started taking photographs of landscapes, children and everything I managed to capture in the frame. At the beginning of my adventure with photography, I took pictures with a phone and a holder I made myself for an observation telescope. However, I still felt unsatisfied, so I bought a Nikon D3400 DSLR.
It was a nice, handy camera, but it had one small drawback: taking night photographs with it was difficult. Then my friend Piotrek, a fairly well-known photographer in Bolesławiec, lent me a camera—and not just any camera, but a full-frame Nikon D610. During that time, I met people in a Facebook group who were just as passionate as I was about photographing the night sky. We have known one another in the Facebook group for several years, but I have never met any of them in person.
One of them is, unfortunately, the late Krzysztof Łakomski, a wonderful person and the best specialist in astrophotography. Why am I mentioning him? He believed in me and my abilities, as well as the noticeable progress I was making in learning photography. I could never have afforded to buy really good equipment. My friend Krzyś, as we called him, sold me equipment for essentially 30% of its value: a Nikon D750, the kind already used by professionals. Over time, drawing on Piotr’s experience with camera settings, composition and similar matters, and that of another Piotr with editing, editing software and weather programs, as well as Krzysztof’s knowledge, I learned a great deal.
Work and family responsibilities do not always give me the opportunity to create photographs. All the more so because astrophotography requires a great deal of time. Collecting 16 minutes of material takes several hours of work in the field, preferably in freezing weather. There is a very dark place near where I live. The Milky Way is so clearly visible there that it dazzles the eyes, but that is because the location is almost 10 km from the nearest buildings. It is an astonishingly beautiful place to sit at night in the middle of a forest, beside a pond, with the sounds of animals all around: deer, wild boar, beavers, owls and wolves. However, I still feel unsatisfied. I would like to have better equipment, specially designed for astrophotography, and more experience. My greatest dream connected with my passion is to see and capture the Northern Lights in a photograph.”