Space photographer and visual artist J-P Metsävainio is passionate about capturing cosmic landscapes and atmospheres. About thirty years ago, he acquired a small telescope and was enchanted by the reality he saw through it. The artist in him immediately wanted to capture the atmosphere and view he saw in images, and he continues to do so, even decades later.
Using a reflective telescope, Metsävainio photographs the complex details of the night sky, while using shorter focal length camera optics to capture wider areas. He selects his subjects, compositions, and visual story elements based on artistic criteria.
To create a color image, each object is photographed at least three times. Astronomical cameras are grayscale cameras, so individual color channels must be photographed separately using filters, just like in the first color photographs in the early 20th century. The colors in the images are taken directly from the sky; they have not been artificially colored in any way. Metsävainio’s work is very slow, as the large amount of data involved means that completing a single image can take years of work.
The Home in the Universe art cabinet is a small, enclosed space that is larger on the inside than it appears on the outside – it can hold an entire universe.
