The prime aim of my most recent trips(s) to Norway was to find the Northern Lights and very elusive they are too. Whilst we are still near the peak of the 11 year geomagnetic activity cycle (which affects the frequency and intensity of aurora sightings), if the sky is cloudy, you won't see anything and up north, especially in the winter, there's a lot of cloud. I've heard stories of cruise ship passengers taking 5 sailings with no sightings and my current captain claimed never to have witnessed them!
This time however, we struck lucky up in Alta in northern Norway. The forecast wasn't looking promising but as sometimes happens the sky unexpectedly cleared and remained clear for much of the night. My target shot was a picture of the Northern Lights Cathedral in central Alta, but the ship was delayed arriving and by the time I got to the Cathedral it was 20:05 (sunset was about 18:00), well at the end of the blue hour and an almost completely overcast sky which looked black even to the camera.
The area around the Cathedral was covered in snow and the building was very brightly lit with searing spotlights reflecting off the metallic cladding but I took some shots anyway. I wandered around for a while looking for the best angle when just before 21:00, a few of the other guests in the area claimed excitedly that they had captured aurora on their smartphones. Sure enough, there seemed to be a very faint green glow in the distance. I attempted to capture this with my camera but as time progressed, the lights became stronger and moved over the Cathedral and the clouds started to clear. This was the dream shot materialising.
Planting my tripod in the snow on the unobstructed side of the Cathedral, the next problem became apparent. The Cathedral was so brightly lit that it was impossible to expose correctly for both the aurora and the building in the same frame: there were 5 stops of difference! Plus the aurorae were moving quite quickly and more than a few seconds of exposure would result in blur. One has to think quickly in these circumstances so I chose a high ISO to give shutter speeds of 1-4s for the sky and, trying not to move the tripod in the (melting) snow despite cold fingers, took a series of much shorter bracketed exposures of the Cathedral in the hope of combining them later.
After about half an hour, the aurorae seemed to die down so I returned to the ship - 20 minutes away by shuttle. Considering the evening to be reasonably successful, I returned to my cabin to review the results but at about 22:30 got a call from one of the astronomy team that the lights were again visible. Looking for an aurora shot over an attractive seascape, I went up on deck where the lights had been dimmed to facilitate stargazing and aurora watching and set up my larger tripod in the hope that the ship would remain stable enough for reasonable exposures. From about 22:45, the aurorae came out in force and the views out to starboard and from the stern were both dramatic - if not a little dark.
By about midnight, I felt that I'd captured enough, though the aurorae reportedly continued until about 2am. Asking a local in Alta the next day about how typical this sighting had been he said that it was common enough up there and the aurorae brightness was medium with a thin veil of cloud preventing sight of fine structural details but that the duration of the 'show' was really quite long compared with usual.
Some of the results can be seen here
In the not too distant future, I plan to create a downloadable guide to aurora shooting which gives much more of the technical detail, how to overcome challenges like combining bright artificial lights with faint aurorae, guidance on processing techniques and use of smartphones. If you have not yet registered to receive these blogs and notifications directly to your e-mail address, you can do so via this link