Back on the 23rd of August, I was out scouting locations for shooting with the full moon that was about to happen the next day. I wanted to see where it was going to rise from the east and have a good idea of what I was going to be shooting the next few days. At one point in time during the night, I randomly checked all the three websites for northern lights that I have booked marked on my phone. To my surprise, the “U of A Aurora Watch Website” and the “NOAA Space Weather Prediction Website” were both showing that the chance to see northern lights was very high! So I drove out to a previous location, which some of you may recognize. As soon as I got out of my car and set up with the full moon slightly behind me, the lights started to show. This light show lasted for about half an hour and near the end I also shot a few photos to put together in panoramic format. Below are 4 photos from that night. I’m still learning about night photography and shooting with the northern lights, so any tips out there would be great! Click on all photos to view bigger.
“Northern Lights Panorama 1” Photo taken about 25 minutes north of Edmonton, Alberta.
“Northern Lights Panorama 2” Photo taken about 25 minutes north of Edmonton, Alberta.
“Northern Lights 1” Photo taken about 25 minutes north of Edmonton, Alberta.
“Northern Lights” Photo taken about 25 minutes north of Edmonton, Alberta.
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8 Comments
Nice work sir. Love NLP 2 especially.
Thanks Erik!
Wow, very beautiful! Nice work indeed.
Thanks Dave!
Particularly like the top two Mike. Amazing display. That was the only thing I didn’t manage to catch on the Alaska trip. Will have to head up your way if the conditions are right when I get back to Canmore. Hope all is well
Cool, thanks Luke! When are you back!? I hope you got some good photos/stories to share.
Great shots.
What was your exposure? I’m new at all of this ( about a year now ) and I’m still trying to figure out the low light settings.
Hey, thanks Sean.
My settings for these were as follows:
Focal Length – 19 mm
Shutter Speed – 30 sec.
Aperture – 2.8
ISO – 1000
Usually you want to shoot wide open at 2.8 or whatever your lens may be. And I generally try to keep my exposures under 30 seconds. A lot of it depends on moon brightness and aurora intensity though. For my newest aurora shots, because they were moving so fast, I sped up my shutter speed to about only a 5 second exposure time. I was still using ISO 1000 I believe.