Since time immemorial, people have laid under the blanket of stars and pondered their place in the universe. But, gone are those days since the stars seen in the night sky — especially in the city — are so few owing to dust, pollution and light scattering. Yet, 25-year-old Navneeth was hell-bent on reconnecting with the stars, by capturing their elusive beauty on camera.

Some of Navneeth’s best
photographs

“I remember a time when I had just started photography — I saw a bright cloud-like formation in the night sky. I was intrigued by it and took a picture,” recalls Navneeth. But, the Kerala-born photographer soon discovered that the picture he took wasn’t of any normal cloud. When he previewed the picture, Navneeth was amazed that he had captured our Milky Way galaxy. That moment unearthed a curiosity buried deep within him to seek what’s beyond. He soon bought a telescope and thus began his constant research on what’s beyond the planet we live on.

The process of taking a picture of the Milky Way or the Andromeda galaxy isn’t straightforward, he says. “When you take a photograph of something like the Andromeda, it’s a painstaking one-hour process, as opposed to the five minutes needed for standard photography,” explains Navneeth. There needs to be a minimum of ten such images and then, using a process called stack, these images are combined together to form the final masterpiece.  

Currently, Navneeth has set up his equipment at the Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh, because of its zero-pollution levels. He makes several trips there to capture the sky at different times of the year. His next trip is planned for June, where he will be conducting his annual workshop on night sky photography. Today, Navneeth is one of India’s pioneers in deep space photography. His work has been published in famous international media agencies like BBC.

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