Canon 5d – 17-40mmL 17mm, f4, iso 640, 27 sec. Covered the sky for about 20 seconds… (click for full size)
Aurora Borealis…even the name suggests something pretty and magnificent. If i ever have a daughter..i will call her Aurora.
Here in Norway the Aurora Borealis is a rapidly growing industry. Thousands of tourists coming up north to see the lights and it feels like theres a professional aurora-guide in every little fjord up here, armed and ready with 20 reindeers to take any tourist into the cold arctic landscape. And the number of workshops offered directly towards the aurora is increasing rapidly. It seems like anyone who has ever captured the aurora can offer a workshop… And i can totally understand the fascination surrounding this phenomenon. I`ve seen it so many times throughout my life, but it still manages to send shivers down my spine from time to time.
From late autumn to early spring my photographic focus is pretty much locked on the northern lights. Sure, occasionally i`ll do some seascapes and mountainstuff, but i`m constantly on guard…trying to monitor the solar activity, which in the end is what determines if the aurora will appear or not. But even though my focus is fixed on the aurora that doesnt mean it is the kind of photography i enjoy the most. To be honest, shooting the aurora is more pain and torture than pure joy. But the moments when everything falls into place, the carefully planned compositions align perfectly with the lights…those moments are worth all the suffering!
Online tools
So lets start by looking at the online tools i use to predict the activity. There are some wonderful websites that provide valuable information. Information that i cannot live without anymore. www.spaceweather.com is such a site. This well-known site offers constantly updated material on solar activity. They basically give you a few days notice on what to expect. However, it must be said that predicting the auroral activity is a bit of a gamble. They can tell you that the activity will be tremendous, but you still may end up staring at a naked black sky. Those moments are beyond frustrating…
Then theres the amazing site delivered by Tromsø Geophysical Observatory: http://flux.phys.uit.no/stackplot/ Just check the location you want and click the “custom” button. Voila…you have a graph that show the activity in real-time! So how do you interpret that cryptical graph? As long as it`s staying around the solid line theres not much going on, but the moment it drops drastically…grab your camera and run! Note that the scale changes according to the activity. So when a massive eruption is recorded, the scale expands drastically.
Here is the graph from february 14th & february 16th. Note the massive drop in the graph on the 14th. And also notice the difference in scale between the two nights. (click image to see full size)
Combine those two sites with the regular weathersites and you have all you need to stay updated with the latest aurora-gossip.
The chase
Now you have all the information you need. Whats next? Well…the next part is the hard part. First step is to jump on a plane to Norway, Iceland or some other place way up north. And when you find yourself up north the next step is to find a great location. This may sound stupid, since you have seen so many amazing aurorashots! They can be taken anywhere! Well, here is my take on the subject… I rarely see good aurorashots. Sure, i see lots of good photographs documenting the phenomenon, but thats not what i`m talking about. I`m talking about REALLY good shots! With a great composition, where the aurora is a small, but vital, part of a bigger image. Those shots are rare. I visit tons of online communities on a daily basis and months can pass before i stumble across a really good aurorashot… Lots of randomly composed shots, some even with artificial lights in the scene. There is nothing i hate more than aurorashots with streetlights and stuff in it. Hate it! Thats why i probably spend too much time and go through a lot of pain getting to places that have no lightpollution.
My strategy is to place myself in the same mindset i`m in when shooting regular landscapes. The spots that works for normal landscapes, they work for auroras as well. I almost always spend most of my time on finding good foregrounds. It may be a river, some rocks or something else that can attract a kind of immediate attention both with me and the potential viewers. Lines or curves…bring em to me!
So what do you do when youre standing in a place you`ve never been to before? You do your homework! It`s as important in photography as in every other situation in life. You research the area before you arrive… You investigate maps looking for rivers, mountains and everything else that might be interesting and of importance to the amazing shot you are about to take. I am fortunate enough to live in an area filled with opportunities and i`ve spent a lifetime getting to know the locations. Not as a photographer, but the countless days spent out in the wild fishing, playing and god knows what, have given me a deep knowledge of a pretty large area. But for those of you that come flying in…do your homework!
Then it`s off into the woods and the mountains! This is the part that i hate… Walking or skiing for hours in deep snow, constantly fighting the blistering cold. And on top of that…it`s freakin dark! There has been times when i`ve only been able to see a couple of meters illuminated by my headlamp. Being tremendously scared of the dark doesnt exactly help. Ever since i started chasing the aurora i have regretted watching so many horrormovies when i was a kid. Those movies has left some deep scars in the back of my head. Too many times have i been skiing in the dark convinced that i was being chased by a serial killer with a chainsaw. Freaks me out!
So these nightly adventures are both physically and mentally exhausting for me. It`s just not very comfortable. Comfort and serious auroraphotography dont go hand in hand, thats for sure. Give me a sunset or a sunrise any day! A couple of days ago i spent two hours in complete darkness to get to a good location. When i got there i was treated with nothing but a clear sky. This has happened so many times that i`ve completely lost count.
Since october i have probably had 20-30 adventures…how many satisfying shots have i taken? Two or three shots…
Pressing the shutter
When you have everything set up the way you want. You are standing in a remote place. You have survived any serialkillers chasing you in the woods. You have fought your way through thick snow and you can still feel your fingers in the biting cold. How do i expose my northern lights shots? I wont go too deep into this, but i`ll just share my most used settings.
Manual mode 100% of the time. Auto whitebalance, since i always adjust that when i get home. Although its somewhat satisfying to get the whitebalance right in camera and to see a kick ass shot on your lcd. So actually…just for fun, try setting the whitebalance in camera. I seem to end up around 3000K on my shots. Aperture wide open, 2.8 on my 16-35mm. ISO 400-1600 on my good old 5d. Occasionally 3600, but if youre a filthy rich dude owning cameras that i only can dream about, go ahead and shoot even higher iso. Then adjust the shutterspeed until you get the results you are after. Mostly anything between 1 sec and 30 sec. So the ideal equipment for shooting the aurora is a really fast wideangle and a camera that can handle high iso. All shots in this article have the exif written underneath. That should give you an idea of camerasettings…
Focusing in the dark is tricky. I get asked about this a lot. I focus manually on most of my nightshots. Mostly i set focus to infinity. So far it has worked fine for me. If you dont know how to set infinity focus manually, you can use the autofocus and focus on something bright in the distance…the moon for example. Then switch to manual. Now youre focusing on infinity.
If your not out in bright moonlight you will soon experience that the landscape appears really dark. I`m not a fan of black landscapes with the aurora above. There are a couple of ways to help you with this issue. You can do a separate longer exposure to get the foreground nicely exposed and then blend in that exposure when you get home. Or you can do it by doing a really long exposure and cover the sky for the majority of the exposure, letting the sky through for just a portion of the exposure. You can use anything to cover up the sky; your hand, a cloth, or placing a piece of paper in your filterholder (if you have one). I use the last one… The results using this technique can be truly amazing.
Postprocessing
This is the fun part. You are sitting at home looking at your hopefully amazing shots and you`re just itching to start processing. I`ll share roughly my adjustments… Whitebalance is crucial! You can change the entire look and feel of a picture just by adjusting the whitebalance slightly. My shots are mostly a little bit too warm so i tend to cool them down a little. Remove dustspots and the usual basic adjustments before i take them into Photoshop. The first thing i do here is to run some noisereduction. Just enough to clean up the file before i continue.
Then i do a levelsadjustment. I do it on separate layer and then adjust the effect locally by using a layermask. This brings the image to life! I can also do some dodging & burning to further enhance areas i feel need it. After this i save as TIFF. Downsize to web and sharpen with smartsharpen. Done and ready to share….
Some examples (click on each image to see them bigger and better)
April 5th 2010
Canon 5d – 17-40mmL, f4, iso 800, 4 seconds
The aurora forecast was promising and i decided to do my best at capturing this phenomenon. As darkness was approaching i put on my climbing skins and started the long climb towards one of the many mountains in the area. First i had to walk through the mountainforest, with crooked creepy trees. I distracted myself by constantly looking up to the sky instead of looking around for ghosts. Once i got over the treeline i was forced to forget my fears for about an hour…it`s impossible to be afraid when your climbing up a ridiculously steep mountain… I`d rather be exhausted than scared to death…
Eventually i reached the area just under the peak Toviktinden. My original plan was to climb all the way up to the top, but i was too exhausted to even consider such a thing.
My eyes wander across the beautiful mountainscape. The sky was getting darker, but my eyes had adjusted enough to get a good view of the scenario. Suddenly i see a creature about 100 meters ahead of me. A characteristic shape quickly moving across the white mountain. The illusive wolverine… Not the most common creature to see. I`ve spent a day or two in the mountains over the years, but this was only the second time i`ve come across this cute predator. What a nice start to the evening….
There was no sign of the aurora yet. I looked up at the clear blue sky, and when i say blue i really mean blue… I saw a white cloud and started to worry that clouds would come rolling in. I stared at this weak cloud when it suddenly started moving. Not moving like you would expect from a regular cloud, it started dancing…up and down and from side to side. When i realized it was the aurora idanced around in pure excitement.
I then started the search for compositional spots. Really not that difficult in such a place. I fired away frame after frame, constantly moving around. Then the action really exploded. The aurora was more intense than i`ve ever seen before, and i`ve lived up here my entire life. It only lasted for a few minutes, but i`ll remember it for quite some time…
At one point the light would come straight up from the peak, like there was someone doing nuclear testing just behind it. I shot at iso 800 at f/4 and shutterspeeds down to 2 secs. The landscape became significantly brighter and i just smiled for myself… This is 4 seconds of concentrated northern lights beaming up from the highest peak.
A couple of hours later i was standing at a nice spot when i heard footsteps in the snow. The snow was windswept and crunchy so i could hear everything quite clearly. I froze when i saw the silhouette of the wolverine just about 50 meters in front of me. It just stood there watching me for a while before it disappeared. 10 minutes later the same thing happened…this time it appeared closer. My heart was pounding… I`ve never heard of a wolverine attacking humans, but in the dark, bent over my camera i could pretty easily be mistaken for a big fat reindeer.
I packed my gear and rushed towards the steep mountainside where i had planned to ski down. In complete darkness with a wolverine circling me in… I somehow managed to get home safely without breaking any bones or becoming the nightly meal for the wolverine….another nightly adventure survived.
April 6th 2010
Canon 5d – 17-40mmL, f4, iso 800, 20 sec
This one is shot deep in the mountains. I`ve spent so many days fishing in this area so i know this area as my own pockets. The aurora appeared exactly how i wanted it, right over the highest peak in the region, Skittendalstinden. I had already composed this shot a million times in my head so i just had to place the tripod, press the cable release and observe the dance of the aurora. A truly remarkeable evening and one that i will remember forever. This was my dreamshot for years…
November 14th 2010
Canon 5d, 17-40mmL, 17mm, f4, iso 800, 126 secs
I came down to a river running out of a small frozen lake. My headlamp was living it`s own life, turning on and off every other second.
I must have looked like a walking disco…
I managed to get out in the middle of the river to these wonderful rocks.
I knew immediately what i wanted. The rocks were frosted so brilliantly. I knew that if i could pull this off, i would have a shot that could be hard to top.
The aurora was dancing vividly across the sky in the exact right direction. Time for the “magic cloth”! I pulled out the yellow kitchencloth from my pack and after i had done some serious compositional thinking,
i held the cloth over the sky and opened the shutter. I was whistling while i watched the aurora put on her show for me. I was tempted to remove the cloth in fear of it disappearing. But i knew that if i completed this one, the reflections would look insane. After a little over 100 seconds i removed the cloth and let the sky expose for another 20 seconds.
When i looked at the display i was no longer whistling, i was doing the YMCA dance! It looked amazing…even on the small 5d screen….
The only downside was that there was a single powerline running across the sky. It was more or less right in front of me, so i had calculated with that problem.
When i got home i started the processing. The rawfile looked great. Noise was almost unnoticeable. I could see that the nearest stones were slightly out of focus, but i couldnt avoid that shooting wide open at infinity focus. Then followed the obligatory and crucial whitebalance adjustment. Finetuning the horizon slightly. A little levels and then some dodging and burning.
That was done in a few minutes. Thats just part of the story. Prior to those adjustments i had to remove the powerline. Whats so hard about removing a single powerline, you say? well…actually a lot!
The line started just under the aurora on the left side, then cutting across the aurora and out up on the right side. The colournuances are so fragile in these auroras. Even the slightest colourchange screams at you. The guys making the advertisement for CS5 content aware fill should have tried this. I can guarantee that advertise would have been fun to watch.
I had to do a mix of healing brush and clonestamp. My arm was hurting after clicking around 2000 times doing microscopical adjustments until everything was completely gone. The worst processingjob i have ever done.
But it was worth it. I have a 22×16 print of this one mounted at home. It looks freaking awesome and screams at me everytime i pass it…smiling and on the inside i`m still doing the YMCA dance….
January 8th 2011
Canon 5d, 17-40mmL, f4, iso 1600, 32 sec
A truly magical evening when everything fell into perfect place. I had struggled around in the woods for hours in really deep snow. I found this amazing spot and decided to test my patience. I balanced my way out in the middle of the river and decided on a composition centered around a piece of ice. I stood there for 30 long and cold minutes and was about to give up when suddenly the sky exploded. The dark landscape turned into a green wonderland. During a couple of minutes i had some shots worth waiting for. I covered the sky with a piece of cardboard and revealed it during the last seconds of the exposure. The reflected light in the river and the ice took my breath away…
February 14th 2011
Canon 5d, 16-35mmL II, 20mm, f2.8, iso 1600, 3.2 secs
If you look at the graph i`ve used as an example earlier, you`ll see the date is february 14th. This is shot when the graph is at its most extreme. The activity was overwhelming, but i didnt get anything i was happy with. This shot feels like a documentation of the event. I broke my tripod minutes before the sky exploded, and i was so stressed that i couldnt find any decent composition…
january 8th 2011
Last shot is shot about 2 hours before “Emerald River”. Here the aurora was steady and only moving marginally. That means you can do a really long exposure to catch up some really strong reflections. This is a composite of 2 images. One shorter for the sky and a really long one for the landscape. The long one revealed all the small details in the otherwise dark landscape. And it brought out some great reflections.
So to wrap this up in a few words; shooting the aurora borealis is a weird mix of torture and pleasure. You can go through so much crap, but when you stand out there knowing you`ve just took a wonderful shot….it`s all worth it!
But this night the action was so intense i just couldnt risk losing it by spending another hour on skiis in the woods. A smart choice since the action faded shortly after i shot it…
