About

Hi! I'm Eric.

Most people see the orange haze over Salt Lake City and think it's a lost cause for seeing the stars. I see it as a personal vendetta against signal noise.

I’m based in the heart of Sugar House, operating under Bortle 8 skies—which is basically like trying to take a photo of a candle through a stadium floodlight. My approach to astrophotography isn’t about driving six hours to a dark sky site every weekend; it's about the frustrating, technical art of light extraction right where I live. If I can pull a faint nebula out from behind the city's light dome using narrow-band filters and a lot of swearing at Siril and GraXpert, I consider that a win.

I’ve branded my work as 'Mediocre Astrophotos' because I am chronically hard on my own results. In a hobby where people spend $50k on remote observatories, I’m the guy in a suburban backyard obsessed with SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and wondering why my stars aren't perfectly round. Every image I post is a lesson in patience and a testament to the fact that you can get 'pretty good' results with modest gear if you’re stubborn enough.

When I Escape the City

While I spend most nights fighting the valley glow, I do occasionally load up the car and head for Utah’s dark sky parks. This is where I switch gears from robotic mounts to manual Milky Way photography.

I’m a Nikon shooter, currently rotating between my trusty D5300s and a Z50. My desert kit is lean but effective:

Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8: My workhorse for those massive, wide-angle Milky Way arcs.

Rokinon 135mm f/2: The legendary "miracle lens" that I use for both dark-sky widefield DSO and tight, mosaic-style landscape shots.

Vintage Nikon Nifty 50mm f/1.8: An old-school favorite that still holds its own when I want a natural perspective of the star fields.

The Fleet (The Backyard Rigs)

When I’m home, I run a 'Triple-Rig' setup because if one telescope is giving me a headache, I might as well have three. This allows me to capture a few different focal lengths simultaneously:

The Svbony SV550: My go-to "mediocre machine" for those wide-field views.

The Celestron C6: For when I want to reach out and find more detail (and more tracking errors).

The Seestar Units: For when I want some automated efficiency while I'm busy troubleshooting the other two.

At the end of the day, I’m just trying to pull some clarity out of the suburban chaos—and then immediately finding five things I should have done better.