There are two groups of people who take pictures of satellites:
1. Amateur astronomers like this guy.
2. Nation states who take clandestine photos of other nation's spy satellites. These pictures are better, but you haven't seen them.
For everything else, there's some guy working in the lab who's like, "oh, you want a picture of our satellite? Of course, there's like 40 of them on our press site. Do you need more? I can ask around and see if anyone's taken selfies from interesting angles." So there's no open institutional force behind it. So the only reasonable outcome of natural market forces is that amateur astronomers create the best pictures of satellites in orbit.
Amateur astronomer isn't a slur either, if that was your point. Take a look at the galleries on cloudnights, a lot of it wouldn't look out of place on NASA/ESA homepages.
Astronomers usually aren't tracking satellites, so if one shows up in an image it's only as a streak. You need to be moving the camera to track the object to get a reasonably clear image (or very short exposure times, which are relatively uncommon in astronomy).
Agree with everything you said. I just meant he has a Wikipedia page where he's listed as an astronomer and professional photographer. I'm not sure where the line is drawn between amateur and professional in his case. I'm not sure if he works professionally as an astronomer as well, although he seems to be more of a space journalist.
1. Amateur astronomers like this guy.
2. Nation states who take clandestine photos of other nation's spy satellites. These pictures are better, but you haven't seen them.
For everything else, there's some guy working in the lab who's like, "oh, you want a picture of our satellite? Of course, there's like 40 of them on our press site. Do you need more? I can ask around and see if anyone's taken selfies from interesting angles." So there's no open institutional force behind it. So the only reasonable outcome of natural market forces is that amateur astronomers create the best pictures of satellites in orbit.
Amateur astronomer isn't a slur either, if that was your point. Take a look at the galleries on cloudnights, a lot of it wouldn't look out of place on NASA/ESA homepages.