Dreams do come true
What a night capturing the mighty auroras
I have been wanting to photograph and observe the auroras for at least five years now. It has been on my so called bucket list, engulfed in my brain like a bee buzzing around “You should go and visit the arctic to spot them?” What better then, to have amazing aurora forecast in the country you live in?
The reports of multiple big CME’s on our beloved friend the sun, made the aurora forecast just plain amazing for Friday the 10th of May. A very high chance of seeing visible aurora borealis on the mid to lower level latitudes. Also with expected 0-30% cloud cover on most of the night at the spot, it was a very promising forecast. I texted a friend and basically forced him to join. Packed with too few food and our wide angle lenses, we drove to a remote beach in the Netherlands and hoped for the best. We started out photographing on the beach, arriving well in advance to scout compositions and a safe working space. As I always do before night time shooting. I think I managed to get a really sunset photo as well.
After the scouting we went for a nice beer, which we thoroughly enjoyed and waited for nightfall. About 45-60 minutes later we went to the beach, we kept on walking to evade the mass of the people. I took a test shot with my phone and saw that I allready struck gold with the purple aurora clearly visible well before astronomical darkness. Thinking we would only get this from Lady Aurora we quickly took shots and while still not being nautical twilight, we could allready photograph the Aurora Borealis.
Already way to thrilled with the results we got, we slowly but surely saw more glow in the air arriving, and it became darker and darker. We walked along the beach end and found ourselves more or less alone. We stopped at what looks a nice sand ridge for good compositions and started photographing. From that point on it was just a rollercoaster. Every two minutes there was a new composition and the aurora’s eventually popped off in a big way. Colours everywhere. I never imagined it being capable of 180 degrees and never imagined my 14mm was not wide enoug. Also I desired to have a second camera at that moment. One for timelapse and one to play around. In my enthusiasm I forget to take a panorama of the whole theater. Always lessons to be learned. To conclude on my desire to observe the Northern Lights, I think now I am forever hooked. It was an unforgettable night and I would like to see these lights again very soon.
Want to learn how to photograph these amazing lights yourself? Just reacht out to me on any of my socials!
