Love for rockets leads to stardom

Public displays of affection, or PDA for short, can raise smiles or eyebrows in China. But for 37-year-old Luo Hongyang, PDA has become the launchpad of both his career and fame. Jokingly called the "King of PDA" by his friends, Luo doesn't just share romantic snapshots with his wife Li Ying on social media, but frames them against splendid backdrops of rockets soaring into the sky.

That unusual pairing of love and liftoffs has propelled Luo into the spotlight. Space buffs adore him, the media celebrates him and space program officials have even reposted his shots. His photographs aren't just tender moments, but fiery testaments to how passion, timing and a keen eye can take your work into a whole new orbit.

Luo fell in love with photography in 2009, when his mother gifted him a camera. He used it extensively to take pictures of his girlfriend Li, then later turned it into a livelihood when he quit his internet job in 2019 to open a portrait studio in his hometown Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The venture proved profitable, allowing him to open a second studio. By then, Luo's interests had expanded to include astrophotography. Nights spent shooting star-streaked skies and distant galaxies honed his skills. Some of his photographs were picked up by Chinese photography and astronomy magazines. "At that time I didn't know much about rockets, satellites or our space programs," Luo recalled. His limited knowledge about spaceflight came from media reports and rockets were not on his radar.

An extraordinary idea

Then came a cosmic twist. Lou's world would change in March 2020, when a friend called to offer an extraordinary proposition. He had booked a hotel room in Wenchang, Hainan province, to watch a rocket launch at the Wenchang Space Launch Center but was unable to travel due to restrictions following the outbreak of COVID-19. He asked Luo if he would like to use the room instead.

Luo, who was visiting his wife's parents in nearby Sanya at the time, seized the opportunity. "I thought, 'Why not? I've never seen a rocket in real life. It sounds interesting.'" Determined to make the most of this chance, Luo reached out to photography friends with experience in shooting rocket launches. One of them, Zhang Jingyi, invited him to an online chat group where enthusiasts traded tips about rocket photography. Luo absorbed everything he could. "I learned a lot from the online session," he said.

Luo drove three hours with Li and her younger brother and reached the Gloria Longda Hotel near the Wenchang Space Launch Center two days before the scheduled launch on March 16, 2020.From the hotel balcony, they could see the towering Long March 7A rocket.

Professional photographers and mediapersons had already crowded the hotel rooftop. "The view from the hotel balcony was good enough, so I decided to take pictures from there," he recalled.

On the day of the launch, Lou could not contain his excitement. As dusk fell, Luo peered through his viewfinder, his heart racing. As the countdown ended and flames burst from the rocket's engines, he pressed the shutter relentlessly, the clicks blending with his wife's shrieks of excitement. "I had never cared about rockets," Li said. "But standing so close, watching the engines spit fire, I couldn't stop screaming."

Though the Long March 7A mission ended in failure due to technical malfunctions, Luo was unfazed.

He had captured a spectacle. "I took some nice pictures," he boasted, later posting them on WeChat and Weibo. That experience planted a seed of obsession.