We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Abe Snider. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Abe below.
Abe, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
This is a really difficult one to answer, but the more I think about it, I keep coming back to the long-term project I spent several years working on focusing on capturing the full width of the visible Milky Way. When my wife and I were traveling overseas on and off between 2011 and 2016 I kept noticing the sky at night would look significantly different depending on which hemisphere and season I was visiting. In the northern hemisphere the sky and constellations such as Orion and the position of the galactic core were completely different than when I looked up in New Zealand or Australia. In fact, the Moon was upside down from what I was used to seeing in the southern hemisphere, because of course I was upside down on the bottom of the globe. I realized quickly that certain constellations and parts of our home galaxy were only visible in certain places, not factoring in the weather, moon phases etc. As I traveled, I began taking photographs at between 40 and 85mm (focal length) of pieces of the sky and eventually ended up with hundreds of strips of imagery that would eventually make up a panorama. I don’t think at the beginning I realized my end goal, I just was trying to capture new places and perspectives but soon after I began to piece some of them together, I realized I needed to keep going and finish this project. I took about 5 years and dozens of trips to dozens of places on dozens of nights, and I actually ended up planning our entire visit to the heart of the Australian outback around the moon phase, Milky Way position, etc for this project.
I have attached a panorama which is much (but not all) of the full width of the Milky Way that really would be visible best if you were in space. It still is probably the single image I am the proudest of because it is a compilation of so many unforgettable nights chasing the stars in some of the darkest places on earth. Some nights the temperature was well below-25 C while other nights were spent in the summer in multiple desert regions.
Abe, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was always into visual arts/imagery even from the age of a young child. I was into drawing, painting, and ceramics as a young child but as I grew older, I would borrow my mom’s old Canon XTi camera and take it on a hike or around the yard at home and just take random photos not limited by the cost of film as it was an early digital SLR.
As I grew up my interest in photography always remained with me and I ended up quickly outgrowing a small Fuji 2 MP point and shoot I had around 2004. Since then, I never really stopped pushing myself to learn. I took two semesters of a beginner photography class at the local community college and had two absolutely wonderful teachers, Joe and Heather who pushed us to look at photography from traditional angles but also keeping things fresh and interesting. I don’t know why I didn’t continue a degree in photography, I think because the rate of my hunger to learn outpaced the traditional classroom setting. I became completely obsessed with learning both the capture process and the editing process. I spent most of my free time for many years following those two early classes reading books and articles online, buying other eBooks from budding photographers and just experimenting nonstop. A couple years later I started shooting many weddings and portraits and events with the direct intention of funding my need to buy better gear but mostly to fund trips to travel to far off places I felt I needed to photograph. I was good at shooting events and weddings, but my passion was fully in the natural world. Looking back, one of the best decisions of my life was that I bought a one-way plane ticket to Thailand in 2011 and spent many trips over the following years exploring most of Southeast Asia and its many wonderful countries. Following an extended period in Asia I moved to New Zealand and then Australia with the same goal of capturing new places and experiencing new cultures.
I stopped shooting weddings and events during Covid as I had to sell some of my gear to stay afloat but looking back it was a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to step back from the “job” part of it all and focus on the part that brought me the most joy, the natural world. Since then, I got back into the deep sky Astro work that brought me to so many interesting places in the years prior.
I think what has set me apart from others in my field has been my habit of traveling to both familiar places but also those far away places that most people will not visit in their lifetime. At one point, my wife and I with several friends we met in New Zealand road tripped across the Australian outback over an 11km trip with the intention of getting to the deepest darkest place in the outback to capture the Milky Way in the winter.
As time has gone on, I have begun to experiment with the world of digital art including fractal design and generative digital painting. I want those that follow my work to know that I will always have a primary passion for photography and its capture of the natural world but there are too many other mediums to just stay stagnant in one field. I also just got a kiln and have been experimenting with ceramics in addition to my woodworking hobby. In the coming years I will release more work of our diminishing night sky as it is replaced by light pollution and satellites. I want to continue to work to preserve memories of our skies before they change and aren’t visible to the average person.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
When people look at my work, I want them to experience a moment similar to what they feel/see in my image and then take themselves or their loved ones out to a dark place under the stars chasing something similar. The same goes from a daytime landscape image or wildlife image I share. I’m careful now about posting the exact location of sensitive landmarks such as those with fragile sandstone fins or 4000+ year old trees but the joy is the same with sharing these incredible places. There is so much amazing wonder out there to be experienced, if I can bring some of that to people far from it, then I have been successful at my job.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
I think what society can do is support the real people that make art. Buy art from people you enjoy it from. It directly affects their ability to make more of it. Show it to your friends. Tell your coworkers. Show it to your children. Go to art shows and museums and similar places to experience it on a small and local scale in your community. If that doesn’t exist in your area, consider pushing your community for it to have a place. If enough people experience it, their positive experience will create a feedback loop for others to learn about a new medium they’ve never heard of or try something new and possibly become an artist themselves. I bring this up in a world where more and more of the online content is now being driven by AI bots either partially or fully created not by humans but algorithms. While some of it is beautiful and inspiring, I fear society forgetting about many of the traditional mediums and that becoming most of the content consumed in the future. Of the many benefits of art, I think one of the most surprising is that it has been directly linked to an increase in mental wellbeing. Whether consuming art or creating it, there is a direct correlation that it can do wonders on our emotional state. In a sometimes highly stressful and demanding word, I think that sounds like a powerful tool we can use to better ourselves and each other.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.abesnider.com
- Instagram: @abesniderphoto
Image Credits
All Images Copyright Abe Snider