About
Nacho Peláez is an award-winning photographer, freediving instructor and Divemaster whose work explores the connection between people and nature. His story begins in Spain, where, at eight he joined a mountaineering group that taught him to love the outdoors. Long hikes, homemade campsites, and nights beneath the stars were the days of his childhood. At nineteen he left to see the world for himself. Traveling across five continents, he was searching for a way to understand his place in this big world. That journey eventually led him to Scotland, where he earned a BA in Audiovisual Communication and Commercial Photography from Abertay University.
At twenty-five, traveling through Peru’s Colca Canyon, he made his first astrophotograph of the galactic center. It was a moment that sparked curiosity about the night sky. But it was the ocean that held him for the following five years in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, immersed in freediving and underwater photography. He fell in love with the adaptation of mind and body in the element. The water induced profound stillness, a spiritual connection, and a feeling of belonging to something greater.
Seven years ago, Nacho drove south from the United States with a mission to see the whales. Traveling Baja California Sur’s (BCS) dirt roads and camping beside mountain ranches, he discovered a region that combines three things: the ocean, a generational historic ranching culture, and brilliantly dark night skies. After years of diving down in the ocean, he began to look up. It is the unique wilderness of BCS that continues to inspire Nacho’s work.
Baja California Sur became home, and it is where Nacho now lives with his wife Jen and their son Leo. For the past five years he has devoted much of his photography to the night sky. In 2026 he was named Capture the Atlas’s Milky Way Photographer of the Year. His work has been featured by BBC, Forbes and The Guardian, exhibited in Mexico, Spain and London.
Together Nacho and Jen founded Wild Human (wildhumanspace.com), a project that connects people with nature through imagery, expeditions, and shared experiences. Their work is helping develop astrotourism in BCS through photography, community networking and writing the guidebook, Dark Skies of Baja California Sur. At its heart is a simple belief: if you experience it, you love it;if you love it, you protect it.
