Photographer finds joy in dark nights

Meeting galaxy and stars

An's journey began at a stargazing outing organized by two astrophotographers in Beijing, she told China Daily.

Working at a consulting company after graduating from college, she felt pressured by her job and pessimistic about the future, which led her to think about quitting.

When she joined the outing on the outskirts of Beijing, she saw the night sky clearly for the first time in her life and took her very first astrophoto — a picture of star tracks.

She instantly fell in love with stars, dark nights and astrophotography. "Facing the galaxy in the dark night, I felt as tiny as a speck of dust," she said. "It was kind of faraway and yet so close. The pressure I felt from work was released, and I was sort of cured."

She started learning more about taking proper astrophotos with various cameras and lenses, and about how to process her photos with complicated computer software.

"I needed to use a couple of different types of software to edit the photos well, and it took me a long time to master them," An said. "It was frustrating at the beginning. To be honest, I nearly had a meltdown during the process."

Not long after the stargazing outing, she quit her job and began pursuing a career as a professional astrophotographer.

She overcame resistance from her parents, who live in Jiangsu province. "My mother refused to talk to me for a month," An said. "She worried about my livelihood and safety, and now, she's mainly concerned about my health."

A fast learner, she soon mastered her equipment and software, and the quality of her photos improved. She became one of the first members of the China StarVision Alliance, a platform for nearly 1,000 Chinese astronomy photographers and businesses related to dark sky tourism that was founded in 2020.

In the winter of 2018, she went to Murmansk, Russia, to take photos of the northern lights. It was her very first stargazing trip to a foreign country.

During the trip, she managed to take some excellent photos of the lights. Her success led her to explore dark skies in other parts of the world, including Iceland, Norway and Greece.

Obviously, some of her mother's worries were not groundless, An conceded. A petite woman, she often travels alone, driving around at night to capture images of the heavens.

She has experienced several moments of peril during her excursions: She was once surrounded by stray dogs while photographing the northern lights in Russia; she tumbled and almost fell off a cliff while recording a meteor shower in Scotland; her car got trapped in heavy snow in Norway, and she had to wait to be rescued. She also encountered wolves while taking photos of sprites in Tibet.

Online influencer

It wasn't long before An's photos made her a hit on social media, transforming her into a Generation Z icon and role model for independent women.

She began appearing in magazines and receiving endorsement deals, and she was invited to be a guest on some TV shows to serve as a stargazing guide for such celebrities as film star Zhou Xun.

An now has 4 million fans across various social media platforms and has achieved financial independence. "Because of my commercial income, I was able to afford to upgrade my photographic equipment and fund my travels," she said.

More importantly, she said, she can "influence more people with my photos, vlogs and short-video documentaries".

"I want to introduce more people to the beauty of the night sky. I want to be a messenger to convey the wonders of our universe," she said.

In 2019, she started thinking about designing an astronomy exhibition. After three years of preparation, her Cosmology Elements show, featuring a collection of photographs, films and other related installations, debuted in December in Shanghai. It was moved to the Beijing Times Art Museum in July and will run until the end of the National Week holiday next month.

An has contributed four of her photo collections to the show. One of them is named Under One Sky, a collection of astrophotos she took from 2017 and 2022, and it consists of not only images of night skies that she shot in hundreds of cities, but also the stories behind them.

"By capturing these moments, seeing light cast from objects light-years away, and photographing for hours to expose more light through the lenses, I keep throwing myself into the wild to document all kinds of spectacular surprises from the sky," she wrote in the introduction of the work.

Many of the photos she captures are originally in black and white, and she later uses software to colorize them, she said. She said her works can help viewers visualize the chemical composition of deep space objects and provide information on how stars and planets form over time.

"Through this exhibition, I hope everyone becomes curious about the stars and starts to contemplate the origins and unseen future between the universe and humanity by looking up at the night sky," she said.

Meanwhile, an album of her astrophotos will be published next month.