Blog 1. Northern Lights

All the recent great photos of the Aurora Australis taken from New Zealand made me want to look again at our images of the ‘Northern Lights’ that we captured in Iceland and remember just how lucky we were. Heather’s brother had visited Iceland four times without seeing the Aurora, so we didn’t have great hopes - especially as we were a bit early for the ‘Aurora season’ (we were there early September). So imagine our excitement when on the very first night we were treated to an Aurora display. Our daughter, Rebecca, was on Aurora watch and woke us around 1.30am. We staggered outside in the pitch black to see a weak but clearly visible Aurora. We had set up our cameras, for what we hoped to be good settings to capture the lights, but we hadn’t really thought about managing the composition in the almost total darkness (we were on a farm in the middle of the countryside). So it was a case of stumbling about to set up the tripod, point and hope! We were very excited and pleased with the images that appeared on the back of the cameras - there were even some Icelandic horses in the shots. We didn’t see another glimpse of the Aurora during our stay…. until the very last night. We were on the Snaefellsnes peninsular to photograph the famous Kirkjufell mountain and nearby waterfalls. The forecast was for clear skies and a possible low level Aurora. We set our alarms for 1am but couldn’t sleep so headed out at midnight. Thank goodness we did. When we arrived at the planned location the Aurora activity had already begun. Initially the lights were in the ‘wrong’ direction for the shots that we wanted to take, but over the next hour the shimmering curtains moved around behind the mountain before fading in the west. If that was a low level Aurora then a ‘high level’ must be mind-blowing. Iceland certainly put on a great show for our last night! Although I had some limited experience taking Milky Way photos, this was our first time trying to capture the Aurora. So mixed with our excitement there was a bit of panic as we experimented with different settings. We were using reasonably fast (f2.0) wide angle lenses with a shutter speed around 4-5 seconds. We were extra lucky to have a setting crescent moon that helped light the foreground. When capturing an Aurora it is a balance of having a shutter speed long enough without being too long that the moving curtains of light become blurred. Each Aurora will be different in intensity and the degree of movement - so it is a matter of trial and error to see what works best. But my most important tip when capturing the Aurora - don’t get so engrossed in trying to ‘get the shot’ that you forget to take time to stop and just enjoy the show!