Witnessing the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, is an experience that transcends words and photographs. The sky ablaze with dancing lights is a spectacle that can leave you spellbound. For photographers, capturing this ethereal phenomenon adds another layer of excitement and challenge. However, the magic of the aurora can sometimes lead to oversight. In the darkness and faced with such breathtaking beauty, it’s easy to make simple errors that can impact your images. To maximize your chances of capturing stunning aurora photographs, understanding your camera and being well-prepared are key, especially when choosing the right location to witness this celestial dance.
Before venturing out into the night, familiarize yourself with your camera settings. In the dark, you’ll want to operate your camera instinctively, without fumbling for buttons or needing to illuminate your surroundings with a disruptive headlamp – a courtesy to fellow aurora watchers, especially in popular spots. Locate controls for shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Practice switching between autofocus and manual focus. Learn to use the zoom function on your image display for focus confirmation and sharpness review.
Extended periods of standing in the cold night air can be tiring. While it’s tempting to bring a fully loaded backpack, consider streamlining your gear. Leave the heavy backpack behind and carry only essentials: your camera, spare batteries (kept warm to prolong their life), extra memory cards, lens wipes for condensation or fogging, and your sturdy tripod. You’re unlikely to be changing lenses frequently when focused on capturing the aurora. Be mindful of your surroundings, especially near water. Darkness can obscure hazards like incoming tides, so stay vigilant even when captivated by the sky.
When choosing Where To See Northern Lights, popular locations often mean sharing the experience with others. Respect for fellow photographers is paramount. Minimize headlamp use. A bright beam is unnecessary for navigating a familiar beach path and can severely disrupt others’ night vision and photographs. Avoid using overly bright headlamps, and contrary to some advice, red lights can be more distracting if they inadvertently appear in someone’s shot, particularly against snow.
Be considerate of others at your chosen location. If photographers are already set up, try to align yourself alongside them and shoot in a similar direction, if feasible. This minimizes disruption and prevents the counterproductive game of photographers constantly moving in front of each other, which ultimately benefits no one.
Focus is Key to Sharp Aurora Images
Achieving sharp focus in low-light conditions is crucial for successful aurora photography. Where to see northern lights often coincides with remote locations with minimal light pollution, making focusing on distant objects essential.
If the moon is visible, it serves as an excellent focusing point due to its brightness. In the absence of the moon, scan the horizon for distant house lights. If neither is available, the most challenging but still achievable option is to manually focus on the stars themselves. After you believe you’ve achieved sharp focus, immediately switch your lens to manual focus mode to lock it in and prevent accidental adjustments.
Always take a test shot and zoom in on the image preview to meticulously verify sharpness. Discovering blurry images back at your accommodation is a disheartening experience. It’s wise to periodically re-check your focus, especially when shooting in the dark, possibly with gloves on. Accidental nudges to the focus ring are easily done. When recomposing your shot, develop a consistent technique: use your right hand to grip the camera body and your left hand to adjust the tripod. Grabbing the lens with your left hand increases the likelihood of unintentionally altering the focus.
Mastering Exposure for Aurora Photography
The appearance of the first aurora of the night can be subtle, often resembling a faint, glowing cloud, particularly in partly cloudy skies. To differentiate between aurora and cloud, take a quick test exposure with your camera. If the ‘cloud’ registers as green in your image, you’ve spotted the northern lights. Clouds will typically appear white, orange, or other colors, depending on light pollution and ambient conditions.
There’s no single “perfect” camera setting for aurora photography. The ideal exposure is dynamic, constantly changing based on ground conditions (snow or no snow), sky conditions (moonlight presence), and any residual ambient light on the horizon. A faint aurora on a moonless night demands significantly different settings than a vibrant display under a full moon illuminating fresh snow.
However, a good starting point to get you in the ballpark is: ISO 2000, aperture f/2.8, and an 8-second shutter speed. Capture an initial image with these settings and then adjust to brighten or darken the exposure as needed.
Manual exposure mode is highly recommended for aurora photography. The aurora’s intensity can fluctuate dramatically and rapidly, doubling or tripling in brightness in moments. Automatic modes may not react quickly enough, potentially leading to overexposed images if you don’t manually compensate.
Critically evaluate your exposure using the RGB histogram, not just the brightness on your camera screen. As your eyes adapt to the darkness, your camera screen will appear artificially bright, leading you to believe your images are properly exposed when they might actually be underexposed. The histogram provides an objective assessment of exposure levels.
As the aurora’s movement speed increases, you’ll need to decrease your shutter speed to capture sharper details. For slow, faint auroras, longer shutter speeds at lower ISOs can work well, essentially treating it as standard night photography with a green tint. However, for dynamic, dancing auroras, prioritize faster shutter speeds, balancing this with higher ISO settings to avoid excessive noise while maintaining sharpness in the aurora forms. It’s a trade-off between noise and sharpness, and the optimal balance will depend on the specific aurora display and your artistic preferences.
For faint, amorphous auroras, especially when combined with moving clouds over landscapes, longer exposures at lower ISOs can create a more subtle, balanced look, blending the cloud movement with the aurora’s soft glow.
While some advise against photographing the aurora with moonlight, consider embracing it. Moonlight can enhance the scene, especially for weaker aurora displays. Very faint auroras are often less visually compelling anyway. A strong aurora display will overpower moonlight, rendering its effect negligible on the aurora itself. Moonlight can illuminate the landscape, adding depth and detail to the foreground and mountains, which can otherwise appear overly dark or suffer from orange light pollution in long exposures. This added light helps balance the composition between the land and sky, often eliminating the need for complex multiple exposures to recover landscape details.
Composition: Framing the Northern Lights
If simply seeing the northern lights was the sole objective, a trip to a city like Tromsø might suffice. However, choosing locations like Lofoten, or other destinations famed for aurora viewing, is about more than just seeing the lights. It’s about the synergy of elements – the dramatic landscapes of beaches, mountains, and the aurora – creating truly breathtaking photographic opportunities. Predicting precisely where the aurora will appear is impossible, but certain locations inherently offer more dynamic and visually compelling foregrounds for aurora photography.
Once the initial excitement of seeing the green lights subsides, and after capturing some initial sky-focused images, pause and assess the landscape around you. Consider how you would compose the scene if the aurora were simply clouds. Incorporating more foreground into your compositions often enhances the image. Vertical panoramas – capturing a foreground image and a separate sky image to be stitched later – can be effective when the aurora is high overhead yet you want to anchor the composition with a compelling foreground. Reflections in water, such as beaches or lakes (though lakes are often frozen in winter), provide a classic and effective compositional technique.
Putting composition into practice with the aurora is more challenging than theory. An active aurora is constantly shifting shape and position across the sky. The aurora’s form itself significantly impacts the image’s composition and balance. You might find yourself with a perfect foreground but wishing the aurora was positioned differently. However, the aurora operates on its own terms, and this unpredictability is part of its allure. Capturing truly compelling aurora photographs is a rewarding challenge.
