We were so frickin lucky to see the Aurora Borealis on our Alaska RV trip!! I struggled initially to find the right settings for the camera. Also finding the infinity setting on the Hasselblad XCD lens was not easy. It doesn't have a hard stop, but works "by wire" as they say. Wow, what a fun night. I envy those who live in the parts of the planet who can witness these events on a more regular time frame. I have captured air glow in some of my Colorado night images, but nothing like this. Makes me really want to go back and also visit other parts of the globe where you can experience this amazing phenomena.
A little back story here...
My wife Kathy, was intent on seeing the northern lights on this trip. It was a must. She even downloaded an app that attempts to forecast them! So, after going to bed our first night at Boya Lake, I was awoken by her getting out of bed and looking out the front door, she came back right away to tell me she thinks she sees some lights in the sky! There were trees around our site so she wasn't quite sure. So she went outside in her nightgown and then came back to get me. So I got dressed and grabbed my camera and tripod and walked carefully down to the edge of the lake. It was incredibly dark and incredibly quiet. We didn't need to wait too long and the show started. They moved much faster than I imagined. It was so quiet, but I swear I could hear the lights generating their own graceful sounds as they glided and danced across the sky right in front of us. As I mentioned above, I had a hard time obtaining focus with it being so dark. So I had to have Kathy shine a flash light to the tops of the trees so the camera had something it could see for focus. That worked perfectly.
While we were out, I remember hearing animals calling to each other in the night. Sound travels so far at night. Such a special night, one to remember for a long time.
And also a note about the intense deep green colors. I use an intensifier filter for all my night photography. I use it to strip out unwanted colors that are generated from street lights and thinks like that. So that filter intensified the green of the lights, so I had to desat them during processing. Its hard to make a decision on how much is too much. I also keep in mind, that the camera sees much more than the naked human eye at night. Our eyes cannot compare to what a 50mp camera can record. So I process my images more to my taste than to what ever reality should be. I think that is what I like most about processing images, I can decide on how I want it to look, nothing is ever exactly like reality anyway.
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Place: 1 out of 69 Avg (all users): 7.4783 Avg (participants): 7.4839 Avg (non-participants): 7.4667 Views since voting: 1001 Views during voting: 86 Votes: 46 Comments: 21 Favorites: 2 (view)
this is the most glorious scene .. and i loved reading your story . ..
especially that bit at the end where you say "nothing is ever exactly like reality anyway" .. that applies not only to photography .. !! .. anyway many congratulations on such a stunning image and the blue ribbon .. :)
Oh my heavens! This is so amazing! Thanks for sharing your experience. It would be a dream to see a scene like this. I love your note about how you process based on what you want it to look like. I always say that I process based on an emotional reality... it has to match the beauty I FELT when I was there. I think my emotional realities are what I remember seeing anyway :) Mega congratulations on both the experience, and this art piece to remember it forever.
Utterly spectacular, Dennis. I was wondering if you'd managed to catch this on your trip and if this was yours. I've only seen them once and it was from a plane window flying home from Seattle. I was so tired I didn't realize what it was until the next day. So glad this did as well as it did.
Dennis this is so amazing. It is so hard to believe this exists in nature. Thanks for the back story and for the blog
of your trip. It sounds fantastic! Congratulations!
Score should have been sooooo much higher!!! I gave you a 10!!! Outstanding!! It got a big "ohhhh" from me when I opened it up!! I think a GTO in Iceland is a must!!! I'd do that in a heart beat!
Thanks Janine! I think I would be up for a GTO in Iceland too! I've always wanted to visit one day.
It was a special image, just wondering why you have the location as Canada though?
Congratulations.
We did a ten week RV trip from our home in Colorado through Canada, then all over Alaska, and back through Canada a different route than we traveled the first time. Lake Boya was on our journey back home, in Northern BC, Canada.We camped there two nights and was awarded with this special scene the first night.
Score should have been sooooo much higher!!! I gave you a 10!!! Outstanding!! It got a big "ohhhh" from me when I opened it up!! I think a GTO in Iceland is a must!!! I'd do that in a heart beat!
Never seen this in reality, just in pictures, one more fantastic than the other, so there is no way for me in guessing if you enhanced too much the saturation or evened out the formidable green light
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