Anushtup Roy Choudhury is an adventure photographer that take stunning images like these whilst exploring the Himalayan mountains in India:
Learn all about how he captures these photos in this interview.
What’s your focus with astrophotography?
I mostly do astro and landscape photography and after recently buying a drone I do aerial photography as well!
I travel a lot – like going on treks in the virgin mountain ranges of the Himalayas and camping alone.
During my treks I do most of my types of photography, be it landscape, astro or aerial/drone.
Virgin trails often offer great cosmic spectacles at night as they are extremely far from any form of locality.
This gives me a chance to focus on astrophotography, which is tricky from my home in Bortle 9 skies!
“During one of my solo treks I fell into a mountain ditch and barely survived”
How do you plan your imaging?
I am from India, and I do astrophotography around the country, especially near the Himalayan range.
First off I research a lot before going to a place as I often go solo, which adds another level of challenge:
- I thoroughly study the terrain of the place so I can imagine the photo I can take through Google Maps using the Earth View mode.
- I then use Photopills and Stellarium to visualize the sky
- Sometimes I also use Dark Site Finder to get an idea about the light pollution
“Start with star trails – it’s the easiest type of astrophotography and can be done from light polluted cities.”
What gear do you use?
I use a Sony A7 Mark II camera.
I am planning to upgrade to a Sony A7C II due to its compact size to suit my travelling.
My lenses are:
I have also recently acquired Tamron 28-200mm 2.8-5.6 which is very good for some deep sky shots.
I have the Move Shoot Move star tracker.
And my tripods are:
- Leofoto LS 285C Tripod
- Digitek DTR 520 Tripod
What do you do for processing your images?
The software I use is:
- Sequator (for stacking)
- Siril (for DSO stacking)
- StarStaX (for star trails)
- Adobe Lightroom
- Adobe Photoshop
- Topaz Denoise AI
Can you recommend any astrophotography learning resources?
Beginners need to go outside, take some images, make mistakes and learn from it.
My basic tip is to start with star trails – It’s the easiest type of astrophotography and can be done from light polluted cities.
There are some great YouTube channels which can jump start a beginner’s learning curve though:
- Alyn Wallace (RIP)
- Peter Zelinka
- Astrobackyard
- Milky Way Mike (see the Skies & Scopes case study with him)
- Chasing Luminance
Alyn Wallace also released a fantastic book called Photographing the Night Sky.
About You – Anushtup Roy Choudhury
I am co-founder of Light N Lens, a modern photographic community where I am the mentor for astrophotography and conduct commercial photography workshops and tours.
As a part of this, me and my team organize half-yearly offline photography exhibitions where extraordinary talents like Royce Bair and Sanak Roy Chowdhury have been judges.
I also have a YouTube channel to document my travel experiences:
I completed an Everest Base Camp expedition in November 2023 and did some astrophotography on the way as well.
One of my proudest moments was when one of my shots got selected in an international magazine called Amateur Astrophotography. It was my first time getting selected on any international platform.
After that another of my images got featured by NASA’s APOD Instagram, then one got shortlisted for an APOD and was featured on NASA’s Sky Facebook page.
I had another image selected for the website Amateur Astronomy Picture of the Day (AAPOD2), another in Astronomy Magazine.
Last but not least an image of mine recently got selected and featured by National Geographic’s Natgeo Traveller India Instagram.
On another note, during one of my solo treks, I fell into a mountain ditch and survived barely, so I can call that one of my proudest moments as well!
Here are my social media links to follow me:
