Slowly working my way through a few terabytes of timelapses shot in Feb and March.
Just after dinner we saw auroras poking through gaps in the cloud. I setup my first camera outside the rental cabin, pointed across the fjord to capture the clouds rolling by.
For the next hour I was helping my FIL shoot the more active auroras in the east. And didn't realise that my cloud timelapse was turning into an aurora timelapse :) Huge win.
#Aurora #TimeLapse #Photography #Senja #LumixS5II #SigmaPhoto
And I wanna plug my Norway photo tours for 2025 while I'm here.
My annual Norway Photo Tour runs in Feb:
https://ewenbell.com/itinerary-norway.php
Plus a new "Polar Nights" aurora chase for January. Bit more hard core that one:
https://ewenbell.com/itinerary-polar.php
#PhotographyWorkshop #PhotoTour #ArcticNorway #Auroras #NorthernLights #LandscapePhotography
Join us for 14 days of winter wonderland and dedicated aurora chasing in Arctic Norway. Charming fishing cottages and dramatic coastal scenery will be your reward for this adventure. A unique and inspiring immersion into the rugged landscapes of Tromso, Senja & Lyngen, with the help two professional Photographers and a private chef. This is the best aurora chase in the Arctic, with the best people, the best locations and the best chances of getting great shots of auroras and the landscapes.
Just came across another favie image on my hard drive, a twilight aurora from March the 1st.
We had just setup the cameras and were about to get settled in for dinner, when I noticed a little activity on the horizon. I love the way a little twilight (or moonlight) changes the colour palette when capturing the Northern Lights.
Just added a new video that looks at how the human eye sees the Northern Lights, versus our cameras.
Yes they are different, and there's a good reason for that – It's not just that photographers have a tendency to crank the saturation slider:)
TL;DR = The real thing is marvellous, don't need to fake it up with that saturation slider!
#Aurora #Photography #Tromsø #EwenTube #YouTube #NorthernLights
You can definitely see them with the naked eye on a good night. There's a section in this video where I make a simulation of what our eyes can see, using a timelapse I recorded with my camera but edited down to match the human eye.
I think this issue gets overlooked a lot and does lead to confusion when people actually arrive in the Arctic to see it for themselves. It is wonderful to see with your own eyes, but it's not the version we commonly see on social media!
@ewen
Really interesting, thank you - with gorgeous photos and timelapse video!
I've only ever seen the aurora once - through a window on a transatlantic flight. With my eyes, I could barely see ghostly, colourless shapes shifting against the stars - I'd always wondered just how comparable that was to a 'proper' experience. (Which I now want to see even more than before!)
Below: 4 sec at f/4, ISO 12800, blanket blocking light from cabin and a *lot* of luck. (And saturation set to default...)
What a magical moment! Superb that you grabbed a shot out the window and this image is just so full of beauty.
Humans, flying in thin air inside a tin can with flames coming out one end, capturing a 4sec exposure on a digital sensor made from precious metals and sand. What a time to be alive!
Thanks for sharing that one :)
@ewen
Thank you - yep, it definitely felt like an alliance of unearthly, scientific magic at the time...
(I've taken far too many photos looking out of planes. Seeing people in window seats keeping the window blind permanently closed? Oh no.)
Also, thanks for having a watch and boosting the "retention rate" on my video today :) I'm pushing my luck with the algorithm to post 19min videos, I know it.
@ewen
Re-boosting this - for probably obvious reasons!
(So many fingers crossed for here tonight...)
Hoping see a lot of Aurora action in the feed tonight!
@ewen
I was trying to remember as many of the technique tips as possible from your video - the display in Seattle was pretty spectacular...
https://mastodon.me.uk/@coprolite9000/112421433832595597
(I never expected to see the aurora borealis so clearly - while wearing a T-shirt, in a spring Seattle heatwave!)
Attached: 1 image Minimal tweaking - here's a quick #timelapse of the spectacular #aurora from Capitol Hill, #Seattle... (Yes, I was very lucky to get access to a roof...) #aurora #auroraBorealis #wawx
What a marvellous result and what a moment of global joy. At a time when we are very short on joy. Thrilled you got this capture and this moment.
We're in rural Victoria (Australia) running a workshop and I shared this post with our workshop group and everyone is like "No way that can be downtown Seattle???" and what a marvellous moment to share :)
@ewen
Heh - thank you again!
I felt it would be a huge contrast to the familiar, gloriously desolate frozen landscapes to get a busy city into view as the backdrop - and was overjoyed at how much subtle human detail there is, buzzing away. Aircraft, people on roofs, the ferries whizzing past in Puget Sound...
And yep, I absolutely needed that. I've been utterly stressed out with, well, *everything* lately. Seeing people bond over this global, celestial experience - wonderful...
Amazing…
That's beautiful, thank you. I never realized the aurora was so....tall? Like, the green bits draw the eye, but if you look, the waves turn blue and keep going up.
The scale of it gets lost the wider you shoot. Kind of a trap. This was taken with a 14mm lens. When I do that portrait I get close to overhead in the top of the frame, but of course the aurora often goes horizon to horizon anyway!
In a way, these ultra wide lenses just minimise the grandeur rather than capturing it.
Very kind of you 🤍
I've met people who missed out after two weeks let alone three days. Sometimes the weather just spoils the party. Usually we expect about three good nights for photography across a two week trip.
The last two years the weather in winter has been terrible though. Climate change is sending warm and wet air up from the south, and that's bad for aurora chasing.
thankyou!
Arctic Norway. Tromsø is the city to fly into, and from there you can enjoy sooo many great places to chase the northern lights. I run a photo tour each year but there's loads of ways to visit Tromsø even if you don't take photos.
I talk about that region in this short video:
https://youtu.be/mcjEbU0XsOU
And more pics in my tour brochure of course:
https://ewenbell.com/workshops/Norway2025PhotoTour.pdf
Thankyou Christiane :)
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