Why the Aurora Is Hard to Photograph
This comprehensive guide on how to shoot the northern lights guide will help you plan for and work around the struggles that await. It’s still up to you, your camera, and the gods of luck to bring home the images, but this should make it easier. If you see anything repeated here, that repetition is intentional. Add your thoughts and questions in the comments.
When you’ve finished the article, you can download a free ebook (with more info and articles) and feel free to check out my northern lights photo gallery as well.
The aurora borealis is one of those experiences we can have that stay with us a long, long time. Not just in our minds and memories, but in our body, in our hearts, in our soul, in our very being; witnessing the aurora borealis stays with us in how we see the world around us.
It’s a moving and powerful event, and I’m always grateful and humbled by the moment. It is that incredible.
Photographing the aurora borealis? That’s a different story entirely.
One that raises blood pressure, triggers depression and exhilaration in equal measure, and brings frostbite, tiredness, insomnia, and too many other ailments to mention.
It’s difficult, extremely challenging, and infuriating. It’s cold. It’s dark. The aurora borealis is often fleeting, ever changing, and virtually impossible to rigidly predict.
It requires a clear, or nearly clear, sky. That means long hours of waiting, photographing, deleting, photographing, waiting, not photographing, shivering, mumbling, drinking coffee. It means fighting to stay awake and tearing your hair out over location choices all before you even get the tripod out of the truck.
In short, photographing the northern lights is not easy.
Topics
- Finding the Aurora Borealis
- Scouting
- Clothing
- Headlamps
- Camera Gear
- Photographing
- Composition
- Tips
- Discussion
- Resources
Finding the Aurora borealis
The first issue is, obviously, finding the aurora borealis. Not always as easy as it sounds. I’ve posted a number of links and some accompanying information at the end of this article that offer solid information on forecasts and predictions. The bottom line is there are no rules, only imprecise, loose guidelines with many caveats; but there are a few indefinite recommendations that might help you (don’t hold me to any of these; the aurora, like any natural phenomenon, breaks all the rules, all the time).
- Come north (or south, for the aurora australis). The polar region is where you’ll most likely find the aurora borealis (though friends of mine did just happen to see the aurora in the night sky of Georgia just recently; what gives?).
- Look for spring and fall. Generally, the equinox is the time the aurora borealis is most active. Displays can happen any time of year, but Sept/Oct and March/April seem to be the most common.
- Find clear skies. In an aurora is forecast, look for somewhere with clear skies; clouds are not your friend when photographing the aurora borealis.
- Get out early. I’ve taken aurora borealis photos right at sunset.
- Stay out late (I didn’t say this is easy). The aurora borealis is most frequently active between (approximately) of 10pm, and 2am.
- Position yourself strategically. Although the aurora borealis display can occur in any part of the sky, generally the sky to the northwest all the way clockwise to the southeast is your best bet; position yourself accordingly.
- Escape light pollution. The phrase “light pollution” takes a whole new level of meaning when you want to see and photograph the aurora borealis. Get out of town, and keep whatever city light might interfere with your shooting to your south and far away. Then a little further away again.
Next up, be prepared. Being prepared starts with one thing;
Scouting ahead
Go out during the day and find some potential locations to shoot from. Don’t wait until the sky is on fire and head out hoping to find an opening in the forest to shoot through. Realize, too, that in Alaska and most northern locales, in the winter, you don’t just pull over on the side of the road to shoot. The snow plows have been out, and the road is lined with a 3-5 foot berm of packed snow; great for clambering up on and getting a little vantage point to shoot from, but not so great for trying to do a last minute 3-point turn or to pull to the side, out of the road, to shoot.
Do your homework earlier, in the light of the day, and at least have some idea of where you want to be and how you want to shoot the aurora borealis in the evening. I’ve spent too many hours driving down the road trying to navigate the icy road, looking for a place to turn around, trying to change my lenses, put on my jacket, and contorting and twisting my head outside the window so I can watch the incredible display overhead in the night sky. At 60mph, at -20F, the windchill from an open window is no fun.
I’ve been driving down the road on a dark moonless night, seen the aurora start up, then mercifully found a nearby place to pull over, jump out, setup my gear and shoot. Shoot what looked like, at night, a perfect location, a clearing (probably a frozen lake) right off the road that extended away to a spruce forest. Awesome foreground! Click. A nice long exposure to balance the aurora borealis with the dark foreground and one perfect photo of the aurora borealis and boreal forest; complete with a near perfect powerline and set of cables running smack through the center of the frame. I had no idea they were there, but my camera sure saw them just fine. So back in the car and on down the road to find a more workable location. Scout ahead.
Dress for Extreme Cold
Being prepared means being comfortable. Given that there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be photographing the aurora borealis in polar regions of the world, in the middle of a clear, cloudless night in winter months, the temperature will probably be cold. Maybe extremely cold. Possibly even really &@*#^$% cold. So bundle up. Below are my thoughts on dressing for aurora borealis photography.
What to Wear
- Head. (though I usually don’t, when I’m getting dressed): a good insulating hat, wool or fleece, is essential. Preferably one that covers your ears.
- Neck. A neck gaiter or “turtle”. Some kind of fleece or wool (scarf equivalent) neck band = Indispensable.
- Upper Body. “dress in layers” goes out the window here; you’re not (probably) going to be having to layer up and layer back down. Instead, you’re going to be layered up and that’s about it, as you likely won’t be moving around too much. Warmth is a function (mostly) of insulation. Don’t worry about countless polypro baselayers and fleece tops and whatnot stacked on top of one another; you want something puffy, like a down jacket, or synthetic fill equivalent. Puffy, bloat yourself up. You want to look like . I basically go with a wool underlayer, maybe another shirt, and then the fattest, warmest downfilled jacket I own. Being warm is good. A windproof shell is handy to add if needed. Usually just the puffy works fine.
- Lower Body. Long underwear (I like wool) and fleece or down-filled pants; with a windproof layer over that.
- Feet. Thick warm socks. Insulated winter boots. Something with plenty of insulation around and UNDER your foot. Add an extra innersole if you need to. You’re probably standing on ice/snow. It’s cold, sometimes extremely cold. Make sure the boot fit is NOT too tight, compression is your enemy here.
- Hands. Liner gloves, with heavy winter mittens, work best, for me, w/ chemical heater packs as well. I keep those inside the mittens, and remove the mittens as needed to shoot, adjust my tripod, etc. Keeping my hands warm in winter shooting conditions is a mission, with no real easy solution. They get cold. My job is to minimize that best I can.
I sum all this up with the Golden Rule of the Three L’s; “Loft, Loose, and Lots” of it. Loft insulates, loose = no compression, and lots of it means don’t skimp. Here are some of the items I wear when the temperature drops; but realize much of this stuff is contextual and subjective. There are plenty of great options, and you’ll need to find what clothes work best for you; the same is true of camera gear. So let’s move on to the camera gear topic.
Bring a Good Headlamp
Now that you’re warm, you’ll need to be able to see. Bring a headlamp; choose one that has a dimmer function, so you can lower the brightness of it. Too bright and your eyes have a hard time adjusting back and forth from the bright light to the dark night. You’ll need your night vision for shooting. Many headlamps have a “red option”; a red light that is a little friendlier to your night vision. Similarly, turn down the lcd brightness of your camera. Keep your night eyes up.
A word of warning; the cold eats batteries. Load some fresh batteries, and bring extra batteries with you. Lithium batteries will work better if the forecast is for extreme cold, but unless it’s super cold, regular alkaline AA or AAAs are fine. I’m also a sucker for an extra lamp, either in my camera bag or at least inside my (hopefully) nearby vehicle. Headlamps have a way of either being lost, or broken, en route. I use a Black Diamond Storm headlamp that can throw out 100 lumens, which is insanely bright, but I can also switch it to “red” or use the dimmer function and bring the light way down when I need to. It’s more headlamp than most photo situations call for, but I also use it for night skiing, etc, which it’s fantastic for.
Camera equipment for northern lights photography
Shutter Speed is Everything
Shutter speed is everything. Faster is better. Yes, yes, I know, you can always get creative, try some slo-motion and long exposures and make some really neat photos. Great, but faster is still better. Try to keep your shutter speed under 30 seconds (maximum), if at all possible; I’ve had good luck with images in the 4-10 second range. I’ve shot with shutters speeds as low as 2 seconds, and high as one minute. Faster is better. You simply can’t beat shutter speed for aurora borealis, or northern lights photography.
How Do You get Higher Shutter Speeds at Night
So how do you achieve higher shutter speeds under a night sky? ISO is your friend. It may well be your best friend.
I’m comfortable with my D700 shooting at ISO 1600, but on my older, equally 12mp resolving D2x, I don’t like to go above ISO 200. (Note: These specific camera models are examples from when this was written. The principles apply to modern cameras with even better high-ISO performance.)
That’s a 3 stop difference. If we look at how this plays out in this situation, let’s imagine my D2x is shooting at ISO 200, and the shutter speed yielded is 30 seconds. I have the D700, at ISO 1600 (you are shooting the northern lights with more than one camera setup, aren’t you? You should be; more on this later) yields an equivalent exposure at 4 seconds. That’s an awfully big difference
If we factor in the long exposure Noise Reduction recommended for this kind of time frame, that 30 second exposure turns into one minute between photos, and the 4 second exposure is 8 seconds, though I could also skip NR for a 4 second exposure. This means I could shoot 15 photos with the D700, to only one image with the D2x. That’s an incredibly vast difference in number of photos alone.
It also gives me way more control over exposure, simply because I can shoot, adjust the exposure, or composition (more on this later) and shoot a corrected image, all while the D2x is still powering away on my first photo. Fleeting and active as the aurora can be, .
Why You Need a Fast Shutter Speed for Northern Lights Photography
The critical reason for a higher shutter speed though is this; the detail you will get in the resultant photos.
A longer exposure tends to yield more of a ‘sheet’ of color, which can be cool, of course, but loses all the detail of a faster frame. 10 seconds and less is where you want to be, if possible.
An additional reason is anything beyond 30 seconds, unless you’re shooting ultra, ultra wide, and the stars will begin to be recorded as miniature trails, instead of the fine sparkly dots you want them to be.
As a general rule, 25 seconds or less, with a 24mm lens, is great.
Fast Lenses Make the Difference
So, now you have your first step; jack up the ISO.
Next, you want a fast lens; an f2.8 lens is typically considered (in nature photography) to be a fast lens.
That’s 2 stops faster than a f2.8 lens, and again an immeasurable difference. Photographers to say how it’s the photographer, not the gear that matters. While I understand their point, they miss a greater point (for more on the subject – Your gear will critically impact your work).
At the very least, get a 50mm f1.8 lens, a relatively cheap lens that’s very fast and sharp. It’s not as wide as you’ll want, but the shutter speed will be a boon.
Wide Angle is Your Workhorse
Now you have a fast lens, you’ll really want a wide angle lens. This will be your primary northern lights workhorse lens. If you can’t afford an expensive fast wide angle zoom, like Nikon’s Herculean 14-24mm f2.8 lens, buy a 24mm f2.8 prime. It’s relatively cheap, reasonably fast, sharp, small and compact and easy to use. A great choice. A 24mm f1.4 lens is generally considered ideal.
By the way, I wouldn’t worry too much about sharpness here. Some folks worry about this, and particularly corner sharpness on the superfast wide angle lenses. Rarely is this going to be an issue, imo; you’re not shooting enough detail in the image to be overly concerned about this. Most any decent 2.8 lens or faster will be just dandy.
Note also that these lenses all become ‘less wide’ on many digital SLR cameras, the infamous DX bodies; If you shoot a ‘crop factor’ body, you’ll most likely want a wider lens. You’ll also want a faster lens, as most of those bodies don’t have the extreme high ISO quality of the full frame or FX bodies.
In brief, you want a fast wide angle lens, as well as possibly a midrange zoom; 28-70mm is a great range. You’ll want to be able to shoot at higher ISO’s, so whatever camera you can manage that provides a high quality, high ISO option is the choice here.
Tripod & Ballhead Requirements
Next, . You can’t handhold this stuff. And you can’t “make do” with resting the camera on a rock or backpack or whatever other workaround we squeeze out when in the field.
Make sure they’re both cleaned and functioning at absolute optimum performance; cold weather does weird things to equipment, and if you’re fussing with the tripod at home, it’ll be impossible to manage in the cold night air. Any water in your tripod, if you’ve been shooting elsewhere, will freeze up and the tripod will be next to impossible to manage. Factor in how cold your hands will be, and you’ll be in tears of frustration, pain, cold and loneliness (no one else will wait around and hang out if they have to put up with this). 🙂 So clean, dry and re-grease your tripod you leave home.
Cable Release & Accessories
Bring a cable release.
I generally don’t shoot with mine when I’m photographing the aurora borealis, but that’s because (a) Nikon’s screw-in cable release mechanism completely sucks, and (b) with shutter speeds in the 4-30 second range, I don’t really need one.
But if I need or want to shoot a longer exposure, then a cable release is a must have. So have it handy. Be prepared though; that lovely pliable cable release you own will become one stiff, expensive and very brittle (in other words, breakable) cable in arctic temperatures. So be careful with it and carry a spare if possible (keep it your vehicle).
Filters: Remove Them All
Without going into all the technical details, the northern lights and filters don’t jive, so remove filter from your lens. Northern lights photography is not done with a UV filter on your lens. Or any other filter.
Batteries & Memory Cards
Bring extra batteries and CF cards, and keep them in an inside pocket of your puffy down jacket.
Remember, supreme cold eats batteries, even the magical hundred forty dollar Nikon batteries; I bring 2 extra. I’ve never had an issue with CF cards failing, but I know some folks who have, so I highly recommend the SanDisk “Extreme” series cards if you’re shooting in cold temperatures; at the very least, have a few of those along.
( it’s not likely to be that kind of crazy cold temperature if you’re shooting the Alaskan aurora borealis in September; even in October that would be unlikely. But tonight it’s mid November, and the temperatures across interior Alaska are in the -20 to -40 and colder range, so stand warned).
The Two-Camera Setup
My final note on camera gear (and this one I’ve not seen anyone else mention in similar articles around the web).
If you’re an experienced photographer comfortable with your gear and comfortable shooting at night: Shoot with 2 cameras, 2 tripods, 2 ballheads, etc.
But if you know what you’re doing ….
Aurora borealis photography is not about perfect mobility in the field, so it’s the perfect time to try your hand with a 2 camera setup. I’ll set up 2 tripods and cameras, and shoot with both. I can have an ultra wide lens on one body, say 14mm, and simultaneously shoot with a 24mm, or 28-70mm or 50mm on the 2nd body.
It takes a little practice, but there’s simply no reason not to try this. (Note: Well, I’ve now season more than a few reasons. If you’re really struggling getting this process together and aren’t familiar with your gear, shooting at night, and staying warm, then I’ll backpeddle a bit here .. Keep it simple. Simple wins.
We can’t predict what the next display or burst of the aurora might be, so we’re always guessing and shooting. More options are generally going to be helpful. So get out both your cameras, and practice shooting with both together. You can try some long exposures with that backup body you carry about with you, while your main body is firing away every 8 seconds.
Photographing
This section is to offer some input on issues when photographing the northern lights you’ll likely run into that you might normally not experience. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that all the experience we gain is really only helpful when we’re doing things we’ve done before. But even the most “experienced” people around will look like that fish out of water when thrown into a new field. So be ready to struggle a bit.
Focusing is critical, and difficult. Your autofocus will likely not work at all in the dark night air. So find a way to find infinity on your lens. It’s not where any rational sane, thinking person might think when viewing their lens focus display. So practice in advance, and learn exactly where the lens needs to be set to focus at infinity.
Why infinity? Because the aurora is far, far away. Even at f1.4, you’ll focus at infinity, and have the entire image in focus. Missing focus sucks. I’ve tossed away some of my best and favorite northern lights images because I hadn’t focused correctly; it doesn’t matter that the aurora activity peaked right then, firing off the greatest display I’ve ever seen. I caught the whole spectacle (perfectly exposed, I’ll proudly add), and wonderfully composed – and to this day my photo is out of focus.
Focusing Options
Options to help focus correctly? None are foolproof, but one option is to use Live View, if your camera has that feature, and zoom the display all the way in. Another is to focus on the moon, if it’s out. Your camera focus point should be able to find the moon at night and focus accurately. Check it though. If your lens didn’t focus to infinity on the moon, try it again. Or, return to planet earth with the rest of us. 😀
If the moon isn’t out, turn your headlamp on to its brightest setting and see if that provides enough light for your lens to focus on something at infinity (a 24mm at f2.8 will be at infinity focus on a subject only less than 25 feet away). If your headlamp doesn’t throw enough light, use your vehicle’s headlights. If your vehicle does not throw enough light for your lens to focus, please don’t drive at night. 🙂 Seriously though, there’s almost always some way you can find to get the camera to autofocus. Failing that, manually focus and take some test shots. It’s a down and dirty workaround, but it works.
Another option I’ve heard discussed is to use the hyperfocal distance setting for your lens. At f2.8 and a 24mm lens, on a full frame camera body, that’s just over 22′; everything from approximately 12′ out to infinity will be sharp. For a lens like the 24mm f1.4, finding infinity focus, especially in the dark, is even trickier, and some folks suggest using your hyperfocal distance of 44′ at f1.4, then maybe even stopping down to f2.0, just to provide some cushion. I haven’t had much luck with this, because of the way the focal scales work on wide angles lenses. My 24mm lens has no way to focus (using the distance scale) at anything much beyond 10′, then it hits infinity. I doubt this is a good option.
You could always guess it, and try to manually focus on some object 44′ away. Good luck with that, in the dark. The deep snow you’re standing in will make pacing that distance out a real joy, and any other photographers in the area will just love watching you track up all that fresh unmarked powder snow in the foreground of their compositions.
Locking Your Focus
Once you’ve found infinity, tape the lens barrel so the focusing ring doesn’t move. Some folks mark exactly which point on the ring is infinity, but this can vary a little with temperature. Lenses, like anything else, get weird in cold weather. So don’t try to preset focus and tape it in sunny Florida before you head to the arctic for your aurora borealis photo trip.
So now you’re ready to shoot. Your camera is tripod mounted, you’re standing at the overlook you carefully scouted earlier that day, the lens is wide open and glued to infinity, and you notice the beginnings of an eery glow in the dark night sky.
Crank your ISO as high as it might go. ISO 6400 is fine, for example, or higher. Turn Noise Reduction . Shoot a nice long 30 second exposure (or similar depending on moonlight) and check the LCD (assuming the subarctic freezing air hasn’t turned your LCD, “Liquid Crystal Display”, into a No-Longer-Liquid Crystal Display). Check your composition and your focus here. Make sure the horizon is what you want, make sure the framing and balance of the shot is in the ballpark. You’re not checking exposure here, just the composition and focus. Deal with exposure later. Make adjustments to the framing and focus as needed.
Now you’ve got your composition framed, best you can in advance, and the aurora is starting to kick. Drop your ISO back down to a ballpark that works for your camera, lens and own preferences. I’d suggest ISO 800 is a minimum, but I’ve definitely photographed the aurora borealis at ISO 400 before, even as low as 200. It’ll depend on so many different factors, all I can offer here are some basic starting points. Measure out an exposure; whether you use manual settings or an auto-setting is up to you. I shoot on manual settings, but Aperture Priority, with Exposure Compensation, works too if that’s your gig. You’ll want control over the aperture, so I would NOT recommend Shutter Priority or full Auto.
Try a ballpark exposure, equivalent to f2.8 at 15 seconds (remember, Noise Reduction still off at this point). Now it’s time to closely review that histogram and adjust the shutter speed, and/or ISO, to get the best exposure you can. I definitely believe in slightly over-exposing the image a little, if possible, most of the time for aurora borealis photos. I can pull it back down in my RAW converter later, and that little extra exposure helps keep the file cleaner; i.e., less noisy. But it’s always a tradeoff with shutter speed, so I’ll make that call as it happens.
For your Image Quality setting, I (strongly) suggest shooting RAW, even if you usually shoot jpegs, but do what works best for you and your workflow. That means you should weigh any advice you read or receive against what you’re most comfortable with. Fiddling with this stuff, if you’re not used to it, is best done when you should be shooting.
If my exposures are longer than 4-8 seconds, I might turn on long exposure Noise Reduction, but that will be dictated by the camera I’m using, what the northern lights are doing, etc. I’d rather a noisy photo of an awesome display than no photo at all. Personal preference and all that stuff, I guess. 😊
I leave the White Balance control set to Auto for northern lights photography. I can play with it later in the RAW converter, but rarely do I ever have to. I like to keep it simple, in both pre and post-shutter work. Noise Reduction programs like Noise Ninja, etc, can be helpful, but that’s beyond what I’m here to write about today. A good exposure, a well composed photo, some patience, and a whole lot of luck go a long way to giving me the photo I want.
Exposure is Contextual
In review: I shoot RAW files, auto WB, manual exposure mode, and then alter exposure based on the RGB histogram. Some experts like to offer a ballpark idea exposure in their guides, but in my experience, it’s completely contextual; exposure depends completely on ambient light and aurora intensity, and so varies enormously. I’ll offer 2 sample exposures to make my point:
I’ve photographed the northern lights, exposed correctly, at
- ISO1200, f2.8 2 seconds. And
- ISO2500, f2.8 and 30secs.
so ….. Don’t worry about what your “How to Photograph the Northern Lights Cheatsheet” says
Composition points
The basic guidelines for strong composition for aurora borealis photography are no different to any other art form. But the elements you work with, and the conditions you photograph in, will present some challenging options. Here are a few thoughts on how to deal with some of those challenges. As always, the standard caveats apply.
Include something in the foreground. The most stupefying aurora borealis display can be a great photo subject by itself, but it’ll almost always benefit by including something else in the photo.
Do not include a foreground subject; abstracts can be great (see what I mean about caveats?).
Experiment; shoot a longer lens. A longer exposure. A person in the foreground. Try zooming your lens during the exposure. Try moving the lens.
Try using your headlamp to “paint” the foreground. Try using your vehicle’s headlights to really get whacky with it.
Avoid cloud cover; the ideal situation is a clear night sky.
Watch cloud movement and be prepared to move. I’ve packed up and driven 100 miles in the middle of the night to avoid a fast moving curtain of low cloud.
Use clouds to your advantage, and try a composition that includes them.
Watch the weather; and
Watch regional webcams (aviation webcam sites are often a good choice), and
Use available local knowledge. Call your friends across the state/region and ask what the sky looks like there. If the forecast looks good (i.e., clear) to the east of you, and bad to the west, drive east.
Be patient. Doug, pictured lying prone on the Glenn Highway in the photo on page 1, came up here for a week, covered countless miles on foot, on the road, and in a bush plane, only to turn around and head back out the night his trip ended to photograph the aurora borealis. After getting up that morning at 5:30am, spending all day looking for photo subjects, returning to town in the evening, we then spent the night back out in the Chugach mountains hoping for the Aurora; this display came on around 2:00am and lasted maybe 20 minutes. We waited another 2 hours, and then drove back to town, 2 1/2 more hours, for 20 minutes of aurora borealis photography. A 26 hour day. Doug’s patient.
Be willing to travel. You might have to drive 100 miles to get optimal conditions. That’s a better decision than sitting in your car, sipping coffee and listening to your iPod, wishing you were somewhere with a cloudless night sky.
It’s your photo, not mine. So shoot it however you want to.
Tips
That’s the nuts and bolts stuff, but most of that is pretty straightforward, and not surprising. Here are some tips I might offer so you don’t waste the amount of time and energy that I have because I didn’t know better at the time. Some tips are repeated from above, but repetition is reinforcement. (Key, if something is mentioned above, and repeated here, it’s possibly something you might want to closely consider).
When not shooting, keep your camera lens cap on, and/or point the lens down, to avoid frost collecting on the glass; a lens hood helps. Don’t ask how I know this.
Carry a cloth to clean your lens in your pocket for those times you forget tip #1 above.
Do not set up where your camera lights, or headlamp, will interfere w/ other photographers’ shots. If someone else does this to you, pull out your bear spray.
Don’t keep bear spray in the trunk of your car, it’ll freeze, and be no use to you.
A cable release, rather than wireless; it’s nighttime, and if you want to do exposures longer than 30 seconds, you’ll need that cable release. Be careful with it when it freezes solid.
Keep your shutter speed as low as possible, in general. But experiment.
Do not breathe. Everything fogs up and the aurora will almost certainly disappear. 🙂 Seriously, don’t breathe on your lens.
Don’t just guess; know your subject. Learn something about the aurora, the night sky, winter landscapes, and cold air.
Watch forecasts (see “Resources“ at the end of this article).
Double Up: (not for everyone). Use 2 cameras and give it your best, with a 2 tripod set up, each w/ different focal lengths or diff shutter speed, compositions (maybe vertical/horizontal), etc. Don’t bother with a 3 camera setup.
Crank up iso, turn off your NR, make some ‘verify’ shots first; sharp focused images are great, eh?
Practice, practice and practice. When the aurora borealis fires up, don’t waste your time figuring how to screw in Nikon’s ridiculous &#^$%@* screw-in cable release. Know how to use your camera, and how to adjust these settings. Standing on the snow at minus30 deg F in the dark is not the time to figure out how to change your image quality setting from jpeg to RAW. Know how to change your ISO, adjust exposures, re-situate your camera, etc. The aurora borealis, in all its silent ghostly beauty, doesn’t wait for you to find your RGB histogram.
Be warm; cold is a distraction that you don’t want. Humankind evolved on the Grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa, not the polar subarctic regions. So pack those woolies.
Know your subject; if there’s a good aurora borealis display tonight, there’s an excellent chance it’ll be out again tomorrow and/or the following night.
Know your subject; the sun, seen from earth, effectively revolves every 28 days or so. This means a good aurora borealis showing may well yield another strong aurora 27-28 days later. Mark the date, watch the weather and make plans.
Though I’ve seen the aurora right at sunset, and right before the dawn, the lights are generally most active b/n 10pm and 2am.
Stay awake at night. I’ve never had much luck trying to sleep and awaken throughout the night and check to see if anything’s happening. Either I sleep through it, or I wake up, see the sky lit up like Krakatoa just exploded, and then spend so much time getting all my warm winter clothes on, my camera gear aligned, etc, that I miss the action. Regardless how fast you are, it WILL take 20 minutes to get outside, appropriately dressed. The aurora borealis can turn itself off faster than a light switch, so don’t dally.
Battery Management: Cold kills batteries fast. Keep spare batteries in an inside pocket against your body. Swap them when the camera battery hits 50%. A battery that shows dead at -20°F will work again once it warms up.
Post-processing Shoot RAW. The aurora moves fast and conditions change, so nail your exposure in-camera. Minor adjustments in post are fine, but if you’re relying on heavy Lightroom work to salvage the shot, you’ve already missed it. White balance around 3500-4000K usually works.
Get your rest during the day.
Discussion
Here are a few more topics that I’m somewhat ambivalent about; but considerations you’ll likely have to deal with.
- Moonlight: A full moon, or nearly full moon, can be fantastic for providing ambient light to match the aurora, lighting the foreground and allowing faster shutter speeds. Conversely, a bright moon will lower the sky/aurora borealis contrast, and your photo can lose some detail. Silhouettes of trees, mountains, etc, can be a great subject to compliment the aurora borealis. I have no preference of a moonlit night or a darker night. I just dig seeing the aurora either way.
- Natural foregrounds: some folks don’t like shooting the aurora with any kind “manmade” stuff included. Though I tend to mostly avoid the “hand of man” in my nature photography, I’m open to including whatever elements work well for a photo. Either way is fine, with me. Doug got this killer photo with the highway under the aurora borealis. If it works, shoot it. If it doesn’t, either shoot it anyway, or move.
A few handy aurora borealis resources
You’ll find all you want to know and a whole lot more via the following websites and links. The signups and alerts are a nice tool.
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- NOAAs space weather prediction center
- “the nation’s official source of space weather alerts, watches and warnings. SWPC provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events which impact satellites, power grids, communications, navigation, and many other technological systems”. 3 Day Forecasts here (i.e., check THAT page).
- Geophysical Institute
- Great for forecasts out a few days or so, and not just in Alaska, but all across the polar circle. An immeasurable resource for learning all things aurora, as well as receiving forecasts and predictions. And here is a great page with info on exactly what the aurora is and the different auroral forms we see: homogenous arcs, rayed arcs, active aurora, rising vapor column and the corona. They have a great FAQ page with info here.
- Space Weather
- Another good site for following aurora stuff – they also have an Alert service, and can send you an alert by phone and/or email. They also have a host of information concerning sun spots, leonid meteor showers, and so on. Also, this is a general “space weather” website with tons of pertinent info for not just, aurora borealis photography, but anything solar related.
- SOHO
- The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. A joint project between NASA and Space for Europe (ESA) “to study the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind.” The observatory was launched in 1995, and slowly moves around the sun, w/ fancy instruments that measure all kinds of crazy stuff. SOHO was designed to answer these 3 questions: “What is the structure and dynamics of the solar interior? Why does the solar corona exist and how is it heated to the extremely high temperature of about 1 000 000°C? Where is the solar wind produced and how is it accelerated?”; SOHO is also now the most prolific discoverer of comets in history, so it’s worth paying attention to, for solar buffs.
- Aurora alerts via Twitter
- A handy way to receive alerts on twitter. Follow Aurora_Alerts.
- Buy this book
- The Aurora Watcher’s Handbook by Neil Davis (ISBN 0-912006-60-9)
- NOAAs space weather prediction center
- and DEFINITELY
- Like Expeditions Alaska on Facebook to stay in touch.
So, remember all that stuff, and give it a try. And pray for luck.
Before you go, remember to visit the Northern Lights Photos gallery.
I hope this helps. Stay warm out there.
Cheers
Carl
PS: I have now edited a copy of this entire article updated it, added a ton more photos, and generally made it way cooler, PLUS made it available as a free downloadable eBook. You can access a downloadable pdf or an iBooks version here.
