Whenever Yoha Tanhua Finds A Suitable Puddle Of Gasoline After A Rain, He Stands Over It, Points The Camera Down, And Records The Galaxies.

Finnish photographer Juha Tanhva has taken an unusual collection of space photos. While these works look like astrophotography images of stars, galaxies, and nebulae, they were recorded with a camera pointed towards the earth (and not the sky).

Tanhua recorded these images by photographing the gasoline puddles he found on the asphalt parking lots. This creative photographer says:

I just saw the movie “Don’t Look Up.” I think I took a picture of Dibiaske’s Comet a few years ago in Lapland, Finland, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. I didn’t look up to take these photos; I looked down.

Lapland is a great place to photograph galaxies, nebulae, and other space objects because it has little light pollution. But I didn’t point my camera at the sky but the asphalt. It is not the space above our heads but the area beneath our feet. That too in broad daylight.

This 62-year-old photographer lives in a small village in southern Finland. With a long history in photography as a photojournalist and fine art photographer who has had more than ten solo exhibitions over the decades. Juha’s photographs can also be found in the National Gallery of Finland and the Lahti Art Museum collections.

Yoha says he took the first photo of the series on September 14, 2005, at 12:20 PM. He says:

When I was parking my car in Fellman Park in Lahti to take some pictures for the newspaper, I noticed an oil spill on the asphalt next to my car. This gas pit was a bit like the northern lights. I took some pictures and forgot everything. Months later, I found that photo when I was sorting through my archives. After that, I noticed these puddles when I was walking in the parking lots after the rain.

Since the first photo was taken in 2005, Yua has captured hundreds more pictures for the project.

He says:

I found a small world under the parked cars.

We hope you enjoyed this part of Shutter. What do you think of users about the pictures of this creative photographer? Have you ever managed to capture such images?