About the author

The large FOV eclipse image awarded at the Insight 2018 Astronomy Photographer of the year competition.

I am a French optical engineer and amateur photographer passionate with physics and optics.

When I was 12, I got my first scope, a 115/900 Newtonian reflector. At 16, I made my own 260mm Dobson, polishing the primary mirror and building the whole scope from plywood and spare parts. At the same time, I began photography then with an old Zenit russian camera.

After 2 years studying mathematics and general physics, I specialized in optics and related fields (sensors, image processing, …) for 3 years at “Institut d’Optique” from which I graduated in 2006.

My first job was in California on polarization imaging and image processing. Then I worked on optical metrology and adaptive optics for ultra intense lasers. Today, I work in the field of high resolution biomedical imaging.

My hobbies are photography, astronomy, optics, atmospheric phenomena and image processing. The 2017 Eclipse was my first Total Solar Eclipse (ignoring my overcast 1999 experience that took me years to recover from) and a long-term personal project. I worked for several hundreds of hours on it, defining my setups, optimizing my scope for contrast, designing 3D printed parts for automation, making rehearsals, and developing the algorithm to make high quality HDR composites.