The total solar eclipse in the Arctic on March 20, 2015 was my
first. Over 4000 people gathered on that morning on
Adventdalen, a valley outside the mining city of Longyearbyen
Svalbard, which has probably never seen so many people on its
grounds for the past 600 million years. I wanted to dedicate this
montage (panorama), manually crafted from over 600 individual
frames, to photographers, who go out to this world armed only
with cameras and lenses and their committed love to
documenting and preserving the beauties of our planet for
generations to come. I captured the tense anticipation of my
"angels with cameras" before the eclipse with one camera
(100mm lens) and the solar eclipse itself with another (2x
convertor; 500mm lens). While putting together the final image,
I was inspired by Middle Ages paintings, where unlike modern
perspective, the focus of attention is portrayed BEHIND THE
MAIN PROTAGONISTS BACKS.
I am a marine biologist and have completed my studies in Australia working on coral diseases. I have been photographing as an amateur ever since I was a young boy. Travelling to remote locations during my studies has taught me a lot about the complexity and fragility of life on our planet. I like manually stitching large panoramic composition because it reproduces more of the complexity I see and incorporates into the compositions the passage of time.
Awards Amateur photographer since the age of 15. I graduated James Cook University in Australia and have a PhD in Marine Biology,
Previously, I was involved in screenplay writing and as a playwright. I published several children's books and a novel on West Berlin during the cold war.
