Babak A. Tafreshi (@babaktafreshi) is a photographer and science journalist — a photojournalist that documents the splendor of the heavens. As a National Geographic night sky photographer, he merges art and science to create images that are at once compelling and transcendent.
Dedicated to creating public awareness about the immense environmental and existential value of night in its natural state of darkness, and to preserving the remaining dark night skies, he is also the founder and director of The World At Night program (TWAN), a board member of Astronomers Without Borders organization, a contributing photographer to Sky & Telescope magazine, and to the European Southern Observatory.
Born in 1978 in Tehran, Babak lives with his family in Boston, Massachusetts, but he’s often on the move and could be anywhere from the heart of the Sahara, to the Himalayas, to Antarctica. He received the 2009 Lennart Nilsson Award, at the time the world’s most prestigious honor for scientific imaging, for his global contribution to night sky photography.
Tafreshi’s outstanding work frequently appears in National Geographic, its various digital, TV, and print platforms, and is also on exhibit in their galleries. Through The World at Night program, he organized project group exhibitions in about 30 countries, particularly during the Year of Astronomy in 2009. The latest one was held in China in 2018. His images are retained in the National Geographic Image Collection, as well as those produced and presented by European Southern Observatory (ESO), are used by media around the world, and regularly appear in Sky & Telescope, the world’s most respected astronomy magazine.
How does he see his mission as a photographer? It goes beyond simply creating images that stop people in their tracks to changing the way they see the world.
“[My] aim is to create public awareness of the environmental value of naturally dark nights and to preserving the remaining dark night skies.”
“I specialize in night sky imaging, connecting the earth and sky in a genre called nightscape,” Tafreshi explains. “It’s implicitly a kind of nature conservation since my aim is to create public awareness of the environmental value of naturally dark nights and to preserving the remaining dark night skies. My context is therefore much broader than an astronomer’s.”
“My photography also aims to bridge cultures and transcend political boundaries by showing the universality of the night sky as an eternal roof above all of us and our diverse landmarks,” he adds. “That’s why I’m leading an international project, The World At Night or TWAN, and also contribute to the National Geographic.”
“Natural night is an essential element of our environment that is literally fading away in our modern society due to light pollution, which also adversely affects wildlife as we’re just beginning to understand,” he explains. “The new blue-rich LEDs that appear in many city streetlights across the world cause even more serious issues for humans as well. Today, most city skies are virtually empty of stars. Today, roughly two thirds of the human population live under light-polluted skies that are not dark enough to see the Milky Way. By losing the natural night skies we lose the best and most profound connection with our origin and future. Seeing a really dark sky is a must-see experience in the life of each of us, moments that you will never forget.”
In the past two decades Babak Tafreshi has spent about a thousand nights capturing images under the stars on all seven continents. “Night hides a world but reveals a universe,” he cogently observes. “Although night seems like a dark, colorless, eerie environment to many people, it’s easy to become acquainted with the night and seduced by its charms.”
“I feel peace, enjoyment, and eternity under the starry sky.”
Tafreshi, who was interested in astronomy from a very young age, really got hooked in 1991, at the age of 13, when he first gazed at the moon through a small telescope. “I can still remember that moment second by second, atop my family’s apartment in the middle of Tehran,” he recalls. “I couldn’t believe my eyes, and it’s amazing that a simple look at the moon can change someone’s life forever. The night sky became my second home (or as my wife often reminds me, my first home!). I feel peace, enjoyment, and eternity under the starry sky.”
Tafreshi started night sky photography in the early 1990s, soon after acquiring his first telescope, shooting pictures with a simple SLR setup. Gradually he realized that his real passion was not for telescopic photography but for the night environment itself and the combination of night sky and landscape, where he could merge art and science, sky and earth, and express the connection between the two that’s been appreciated by humankind even before the dawn of civilization.
He began to travel to places away from light pollution where natural night is still preserved, and at the same time he also documented urban areas where the night sky has vanished due to light pollution.
Tafreshi’s first night sky photos were mainly long multi-hour star trails shot on low ISO slide films such as Fujichrome Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64 but a few years later he explored other wonders of the night sky such as meteor showers, great comets, and a total eclipse.
Then in March 1997 an event occurred that turned out to be a milestone — the Comet Hale-Bopp became the king of the night sky, bright enough to be easily seen even from major cities. “At 19, I was then the youngest editor at Iran’s astronomy magazine, Nojum,” he recalls, “and my photo of the comet from the nearby Alborz Mountains, captured on ISO1600 film, appeared on a couple of magazine covers and launched my professional photography career. Under dark skies the comet’s blue ion tail and its white dust tail were visible to the naked eye — it was an enormous object in the sky.”
“My first group exhibition was held in the same year,” he continues. “For the first ten years of my career, until I started The World at Night project with a team of internationally known night sky photographers in 2007, I was more a science journalist and less of a photographer, at least in terms of my income. However, since then, I’ve shifted more toward photography, using my journalism experience to enhance my visual storytelling and communications skills.”
Tafreshi studied physics in college, and he learned a lot about science journalism and communication in the course of his editorial work, but when it came to photography, he was largely self-taught. However, he was inspired by the work of two great photographers.
“After I saw Ansel Adams’ amazing 1942 photo of ‘The Tetons and the Snake River,’ I started exploring his style and trying to emulate it in my own way,” he recalls. “The other is David Malin, a British-Australian astronomer and probably the world’s most accomplished astrophotographer, now 77. He pioneered color photography of the deep universe on film, discovered new puzzles in the night sky, and inspired so many of us across the world to do science photography. As an advisor and team member of The World at Night project, he has supported us from the very beginning.”
“As for my own style, I consider myself a science photojournalist,” he adds. “My photos touch various genres although many of them fit into the nature photography category, others are news related, and some look like abstract fine art works to galleries and art collectors. Indeed, some are displayed in the National Geographic Fine Art galleries.”
What equipment does Tafreshi use to create his spectacular images? “Mainly fast prime lenses and full frame DSLR cameras, which are more capable in low light environments because they higher Quantum Efficiency (the sensor’s real sensitivity),” he notes. “One of my go-to cameras is a Nikon D810A, a Nikon D810 modified for astrophotography by having the IR-cut filter on the sensor replaced to allow more of the red end of the spectrum to be recorded, which is essential for capturing most nebulae in the sky.”
“Fast, sharp, and aberration-free wide-angle lenses are immensely helpful in night photography. I have found the Sigma Art series the best so far including The Sigma14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art (the fastest in this class), Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art (for closer and more details views) and the Sigma 105mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art, which many consider a bokeh-master portrait lens but is also very useful in night sky photography where the subject is too small for wide-angle lenses, such as a comet or a nebula. I also use a very compact star tracker known as the Polarie by Vixen, which helps me to increase the exposure and keep the stars pinpoint (effectively freezing the earth’s rotation) when needed. A stable tripod and with a robust ball head is also essential since night photography involves long exposures, often in windy conditions.”
What are some of the things that make Tafreshi’s work stand out? He says it best.
“For me there are four principal elements or values in photography: art, technique, moment, and story,” he says. “My goal is to bring all these together in a night photograph. To maintain the value of the moment and the originality of the image I do mainly single exposure photographs. However, many other nightscape photographers, especially those of the younger generation, prefer to digitally blend images of various exposures and focus points, sometimes even incorporating elements from various places and from totally different times. I do respect that as a form of art but I think the credibility of moment and documentary is gone in these ‘hard-composite’ images.”
“Another secret key to effective nightscape photography is being in the right place at the right time,” he says. “Knowledge of astronomy and stargazing together with an artistic point of view is what creates an enchanting photograph which has both the beauty and science aspects; a fine art image and a powerful educational tool. Going forward I see myself bringing even more of the journalism aspect to my future work, that is, combining science and art with photojournalism.”
Perhaps the most fitting tribute to Tafreshi’s extraordinary work came at the time of his most notable achievement, sharing the 2009 Lennart Nilsson Award, the world’s highest distinction in scientific and medical photography, with Carolyn Porco, NASA’s Cassini Imaging Director. At that momentous event, the judges described the arc of his career as “reclaiming a night sky that most modern people have lost, the work that calls to mind the beauty of the universe and human life on our planet, taking people to remote places where the stars still look like they did at the dawn of mankind.”
Simply put, Tafreshi’s work embodies the classical Latin motto, per aspera ad astra — through hope to the stars.
You can find more of Tafreshi’s images on his Instagram @babaktafreshi, and on his websites, babaktafreshi.com and twanight.org.
