1) Numbered lists are overdone. 2003 is long, long gone.
2) Write something worthwhile reading, then you don’t need to use stupid click-bait headings to draw an audience.
3) The world has enough spam already.
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Here’s a shot of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, I took from just near McCarthy, in Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
I was guiding a photo tour into the park, and we were late leaving Anchorage, due to delays with one of the guest’s flight to Alaska.
Wikipedia says this about the northern lights:
“Auroras are now known to be caused by the collision of charged particles (e.g. electrons), found in the magnetosphere, with atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere (at altitudes above 80 km). These charged particles are typically energized to levels between 1 thousand and 15 thousand electronvolts and, as they collide with atoms of gases in the atmosphere, the atoms become energized. Shortly afterwards, the atoms emit their gained energy as light. Light emitted by the Aurora tends to be dominated by emissions from atomic oxygen, resulting in a greenish glow (at a wavelength of 557.7 nm) and – especially at lower energy levels and at higher altitudes – the dark-red glow (at 630.0 nm of wavelength). “
Make sense? There you have it folks – the northern lights are tiny little things in the air, like dust, so small we can’t even see them, that glow because they crash into other tiny little things we can’t see. How cool is that?
They’re called the aurora borealis after the Roman Goddess of the dawn, ‘Aurora’, and the Greek god of Wind, “Borealis”. That sounds reasonable, except that the Aurora Borealis isn’t visible in either Greece or Rome.
Seems to me then we should allow people who do see them reguarly to name them. The Scottish called them “the merry dancers” or na fir-chlis.
The Scandinavians name for the northern lights translates as “herring flash”. It was believed that northern lights were the reflections cast by large swarms of herring onto the sky.
The name they gave the northern lights was “norðurljós” — which I have no idea how to pronounce. The Norse folks also called them “the fires that surround the North and South edges of the world”.
In central Asia the belief of the Chuvash peoples is that the lights were the god/goddess Suratan-tura (Birth-giving Heaven).
The Algonquin Indian folklore proclaimed that the northern lights were their ancestors dancing around a ceremonial fire.
The Athabascan people who lived in what is now known as Wrangell St. Elias National Park, saw messages from their dead, the “sky dwellers“.
I love this kind of way of seeing the world. It’s beautiful, much more beautiful than ‘the northern lights’. And as beautiful as they are, it seems fitting we should have a beautiful way to refer to them.
We’ve had some pretty great weather here through the month of February, and that means, a great time to get out and look for northern lights. Working on my own project, rather than photo tours, I was able to hit a few destinations I wanted to shoot that are a little more hit and miss; less reliable than some others, but places I wanted to shoot nonetheless.
One of those places is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Inevitably I’d be in the wrong place at the wrong time in a place slightly larger than the country of Switzerland; I’d head off in one direction and then have fog and haze cloud up the skies, or I’d head off in another direction, and the lights display would be directly behind me. The mountains in front me being what I want to shoot, and the lights behind me. Not a great mix.
But, such is what happens when you have specific ideas in mind; it’s important to be flexible in nature photography, and particularly so when shooting the northern lights, but part of working on a project involves fulfilling your own ideas. Spontaneity is great, and I’m all for it. But I’m also interested in trying to make a photo of something I envision ahead of time, and working toward that.
It’s a rewarding, but often frustrating endeavor.
Continue readingHey Folks,
What’s your page rank? How many friends do you have? Retweets? Have you shared anything today? What’s your title tag? Incoming links? How’s your website rank?
Now that summer is over, and it’s officially “office season”, you’re probably spending your time doing much of what I’ve been doing lately; website work, photo editing, marketing and promotion via the sticky, tricky and infinite webs we call SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & Social Media (making me wonder what, exactly, Anti-social Media might be).
SEO is a pretty tricky beast. It’s a lot of research, reading, re-reading, web-coding, overhauling, reviewing, more research, re-coding and hair pulling. It’s mostly a lot of trial and error; it’s not a given, for example, that what works for one site is applicable and relevant for another. And it’s almost certain that what works on the article you just carefully absorbed will not work on your website. So, it’s mostly guesswork.
Sometimes the results are what we hoped for, and we pat ourselves on the back, and think how clever we are. Sometimes, despite all out best efforts, the old googles kick our superbly optimized page to the bottom of page 11 on their results; this really hurts when you see some trashy, 1993-styled geocities looking webpage showing up on the first page of rankings.
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Hey Folks,
One topic I’ve often heard discussed relating to nature and outdoor photography pertains to the value of the experience itself. Does photography “get in the way”, and limit the photographers’ realization of the experience itself, or does it add to it?
I have friends, for example, that don’t like to bring a camera on a backpacking trip because they feel it hinders how they are able to soak up the actual experience. They’d rather sit and watch that glorious sunrise than fiddle with the camera and try to get a good composition.
They’d rather sit back and stare in awe at the Aurora borealis do its thing over Denali than take their gloves off and tweak camera settings.
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Hey Folks,
Here’s another northern lights photo from Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This one I tried my darndest to catch the reflection in the foreground, but the slight breeze thwarted my every effort.
I’m seriously considering buying the Nikon 24mm 1.4 lens, specifically for northern lights photos. The difference in shutter speed with that lens, versus using a 2.4mm lens, is enormous.
For example, this northern lights photo was taken at f.28 and a shutter speed of 25 seconds. That means after the exposure, is then need to let the camera effectively take another 25 second exposure for noise reduction .. meaning the total time elapsed is 50 seconds. That’s a lot of time to be not shooting. it also means, with that long exposure, the lights tend to wash out a little, and lose definition that comes with a faster shutter speed.
Conversely, if you happen to be suffering from Strep throat induced diarrhea, the longer exposure can work to your benefit; you’ll certainly not be in any rush for the camera to finish doing it’s business while you tend your own. Just say’n, cause trust me, it CAN happen! 🙂
On the other hand, a lens with max aperture of 1.4 is 2 whole stops faster ..
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Hey Folks,
An aurora borealis photo taken a few weeks ago.
I’ve never had the good fortune to shoot the aurora borealis on a well lit night; a clear night when the moon is full, or close to it, would be ideal. My luck always seem to run into a dark night, which makes for a great, great experience, but the photographs could benefit from some ambient light on the foreground.
So, in this particular instance, I turned on the lights of my van for a split second during the exposure. It took me a couple of tries to get the balance right, and it’s far from ideal, but I kind of like this shot; taken along the Nabesna Road in mid-September.
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Hey folks,
Here’s a quick one from the road. Taken last night. The aurora borealis, or northern lights, as it’s commonly called, is absolutely the most mystical, magical, unbelievable thing I’ve ever witnessed, and dare say ever will. I’ll write more on the lights later, but here’s a quick recount of my experience last night (or 2 nights).
I was headed to the north side of the park, during the evening, after finally get my van out from a mudhole I’d stupidly driven into. So I was late heading north.
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