Northern Lights Lead to Busy Days

I feel like I need to wipe the sweat off my brow after the past few days.

It was a normal weekend, pleasant, relaxing. A holiday party on Friday followed by an easy Saturday at home, a nice ride on the snow bike. Early that evening, much to my pleasure and surprise, the aurora popped out early. But not just any display, this one was right overhead and going off red. Reds are interesting color for the aurora, it usually appears most dramatically in the images, but is rarely visible to the naked eye. Saturday however, there were reds obvious in the streaking curtains above.

When the curtain passed right overhead, creating a starburst coronal form, I set up my tripod right where I was, taking only enough time to find a decent composition through the trees, and started snapping images. On a few shots, I used the beam of my headlamp to “light paint” the snowy spruces.

The first part of the show didn’t last long, the colors fading to pale greens. Later, on the computer, I was pleased about a few of the images and promptly uploaded one to my Facebook page (top image). It got shared a few times, and then, KABOOM, it went off. By this morning that image had received more than 100,000 views. Far and away my most popular image.

It’s kind of crazy actually. I’d like to be able to say that it was a really difficult image to make (it wasn’t, I was less than 100 yards from my front door). I’d like to say I had to suffer through the cold (nope it was in the high 20s). Or that it took some special technical skills (it was a simple 13 second exposure at ISO 1600, f2.8). But I was there. That perhaps is the most important, little mentioned, and ONLY unbreakable rule in photography: Be There. If you aren’t out trying, well then there is nothing to be discussed in terms of composition, camera settings, or equipment. Gotta be out there first.

Anyway, it turned into a busy past couple of days, all because of the power of social media and that image. Below are a few more from that display. It sure was a good one. Hope it keeps up through the rest of the winter.