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My First Time

Back in April of 2023, I had the chance to see an amazing aurora for the first time. The solar forecast looked decent, and I was expecting to see some light off on the horizon, maybe I would get lucky and see some pillars. That is how the night started, and then it just went nuts.

I had never seen the aurora, let along photograph it. I wasn’t flying completely blind though. I had done a little basic research on photographing them, and the technical side is pretty straightforward. It’s dark, and you’re trying to capture something that is hard to see anyway. That means a high ISO, and a fast lens. Also, you really want to get as wide as possible generally speaking. Even with the high ISO and big aperture (by big I mean the opening not the value), you still need to run longer exposures. That is where the decisions come into play.

The image on the right was shot at 2.5 seconds. I wanted to keep a slightly shorter shutter speed to be able to see some of the detail in the aurora itself. The trade off of course is ISO which generally means more noise. Then again, the newer cameras today noise is not nearly the issue that it has been. Plus, software is really good at removing it. The right image 15 seconds. You can get away with lower noise, but you sacrifice detail. However, maybe you want to lose detail and see the “motion”. I specifically wanted to make it look like the disturbance was moving to bring a sense of movement into the image. No idea if it was the right choice, but that is by far my favorite aurora image I’ve taken so far.

The moral to this story is, knowing photography basics is critical to be able to walk into lots of situations and be able to function. Planning is important as I already knew about this location and wanted to shoot there at some point anyway. Sure, there was some experimentation while I was there, but I already had a solid idea of where to start. Know your camera, know how everything relates; it will make your life so much easier.

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