Aurora Borealis makin’ me crazy
Aaaaaaarggghhh! I am tearing my hair out on this one. Aurora Borealis. A combination of the Roman goddess of the dawn/sunrise and the Greek god of the wind, the name conjures sweeping colors, crackling cold, and the very soul of Odin looking down at you through the ages…and the experience delivers!
But the weird thing about the aurora, it’s the only incidence I can think of where the camera records it better than the human eye. Normally our eyes trumps the living bejeezus out of any equipment (really, they are amazing), but a camera’s ability to withhold perception for thirty seconds comes in handy with the aurora, slow, subtle, and faint as it often is.
So when we spent a few frigid nights watching muted colors caress the underbellies of the stars, and I looked down (with fully night-adjusted eyes) to see beautiful colors on my magic little view screen… I had high hopes.
So today, trying to get them to look the way they did when I was there….
aaaaaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh! Why you no wanna werk wif me, stoopid image?
Blaming one’s equipment is a lame excuse at best, if not outright verboden, and I can already see at least one setting I should have changed. And if I was better at editing, I’m sure I could enhance these more effectively. But at the end of the day, it was damn fun to be out there, scrambling around in the dark, nabbing what I could. And I’ll take the learning experience.
We had pessimistic forecasts every day, “solid cloud cover and low aurora activity” the screens would declare, but for the first couple nights, and one towards the end, we had enough clarity and enough activity to marvel at the green glow of ionic mysticism.
The first night was crouching on the ice cubes piled up beside the lake in Þingvellir National Park (Thingvellir), where I, being a complete space cadet, had forgotten to bring my tripod, so rested my camera on the ground.
The second night was an improvement in equipment, my tripod splayed by the road back from Akranes, but the wind was being petulant, and even in the relative calm next to the car, a sharp image escaped me.
The last night was spent overlooking Jökulsarlon, the glacial lagoon that anchors my love of Iceland. I clambered down the gravel hillside and sat alone in the dark, listening to the crunch of icebergs, and the occasional splashes and air-blasts of seals close at hand in the darkness.
The images might not look as good as I’d hoped, but the memories are gorgeous.
Amazing! They are gorgeous photos, you did splendid work! Any tips when and where to visit to capture this moment?
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Thank you! There are much better guides to be had than I, but obviously you wouldn’t want to try in summer, or near a city (though we did see a really strong aurora right overhead in Reykjavik one night, but unfortunately didn’t get any images of it). The depth of winter has the longest night, of course, but you have to be able to handle the cold and dark! (I’m partial to April or so, plenty of dark, but not peak season nor the depth of winter.)
Iceland is great for it though, as there are aurora tours you can take, that will bring you to a likely spot, and let you stay inside where it’s warm while someone else keeps an eye out! Then if it starts, they call you. If it doesn’t happen that night, many of them will give you a free second try the next night. (They might continue until you see it, I’m not sure.)
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Thank you so much for the tip! Sounds really exciting..April sounds better than the winter as I don’t think I would enjoy staying outside too long in the cold :))
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Good stout shoes, gloves, and a warm hat are definitely recommended, even in April! (And I would assume the conditions are similar in Fall.)
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I am speechless. Just speechless.. No words to describe it from here. I am thinking how must have you felt…
Splendid..
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🙂 Have you seen the aurora australis? It’s supposed to be harder to find. I’d love to see and photograph both, and compare…
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That is so cool. Seeing the aurora is on my bucket list. One day!!!
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I definitely recommend it! We had heard that this year was the peak for the next x hundred years, or some such. Turns out that’s not at all true (and actually an immense solar storm kicked up a couple days after we left) so you’ll have the chance! I look forward to seeing what images you create!
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Stunning.
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It definitely was. The first night we were there, we spent several hours in a restaurant after they forgot our order at first. We came outside to find an incredibly bright aurora already blazing over Reykjavik. We raced out to the countryside, and even though we missed the strongest part of it, the experience and vision was magnificent.
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The main technical keys to aurora photography: tripod (a must); wide aperture lens (highly recommended); willingness to experiment with shutter speeds and ISOs.
Don’t beat yourself up; you didn’t do badly at all, particularly for a first effort.
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Thank you. It was just hard, feeling like I was just figuring it out…as we were leaving! I’m self-taught, and am so used to manually setting my white balance, that it was frustrating to suspect at the end that I should have just left it on auto! And the couple tries I had at lower ISOs were messed up by the usually-voracious wind. And that blurry tractor! Rats!
🙂 Maybe that’s one of the lessons of photography? While improving and aspiring, we also have to learn to love whatever we get, without being greedy for what we wanted.
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