Wally Pacholka
Wally Pacholka has had a God instilled passion to enjoy and photograph the night sky since his early teenage years living in a small town outside of Montreal Canada. As early as 1964, armed with a 35mm camera bought from a pawn shop with paper route money, he amazed his family and friends with photographs of the night sky that included the surrounding landscape to give the viewer the same perspective he himself was seeing while under the dark skies of rural Canada.
When sixteen, his dad moved the family to Long Beach California and initially it was a great disappointment not to be able to see and photograph the stars from a dark rural location, but soon he discovered the fabulous areas of American beauty know as America’s National Parks. In the 1980’s and 1990’s his pioneering work of recording celestial events above western national parks landscapes gave local newspapers and TV stations the images they needed to promote upcoming meteor showers and comets to the public in a contextual way they could relate to. International travel magazines often showcased his night time national park landscapes promoting the parks but also promoting beautiful nightscapes as well to a wide audience.