What are the odds? — 60 years and Aurora Borealis
I have always thought that to get good shots of the auroras I’d have to travel to Iceland (which I still want to do). Never did I think I’d be able to wrap up a family shoot in Ft. Collins, CO and then drive a little further north, just south of Laramie WY, to get front row seats.
First of all the family shoot was amazing. It was a 60th wedding anniversary celebration plus a college graduation celebration with a total of 14 people. Amazing people. So glad I got to meet them.
Once that was over, I grabbed a bite and just drove north away from city lights. Didn’t have much of a plan, other than to watch for public access dirt roads that would lead me away from the highway. Turns out, it’s not hard to find that scenario in Wyoming.
Here’s the initial setup I went with…
Canon 20mm lens
focused to infinity
set to continuous shooting mode
connected my shutter release with it locked
shutter speed 30 seconds
pointed camera at north star
This was a good first thought at least. As I bundled up and waited for some aurora action, I eventually started to see some very subtle hints of light pillars. When I first saw them I thought it could be Laramie lights that I just hadn’t noticed earlier. But the more I squinted and stared I began to realize that the pillars were too uniform to be city. So I swung my lens around in that direction. Apparently northern lights don’t necessarily show up due north.
Once I had the camera direction repositioned and balanced, I left the camera to run, snapping a new shot every 30 seconds, while I stayed warm in the truck. While sitting there in my truck researching northern light photography it dawned on me that the light movement at 30 seconds might be too washed out. Similar to photographing a stream of water. Really long exposures of moving water can be really nice, but it can also look completely milky and not show much of the stream’s current.
So, I hopped back out into the cold night and couldn’t believe what I saw. I had to tilt my head back to take it all in. The sky was aglow and mostly green, as far as I could tell with the naked eye. Here is a cell phone shot…
Amazing that my cell phone camera could see much more of the light spectrum than I could detect with the naked eye. I quickly changed the exposure to 10 seconds and re-framed now that I could see where the light show was actually happening.
Here is one of the frames I shot…
Not bad for not having a plan. Had I had a plan, I would have found a stream of water with some nice foliage to position in the foreground, with an epic snow-capped mountain peak illuminated by the moon’s light. Then, I would have done some subtle light painting in the foreground to make it all extra impressive. But, I saw the northern lights. I SAW THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. How cool is that? And how cool is it that I was able to capture them at all? Very, very cool. I’d compare seeing the northern lights in person to going to Machu Picchu for the first time. You’ve heard a lot about it. You know people like it. But you’re still somehow floored by what you’re seeing.
Here is a full sequence of about 50 photos stitched together (with original music/audio by yours truly).
And now for the bow to tie this all together… Photographing the couple that was celebrating their 60th anniversary had a lot of similarities to the aurora borealis:
When you see a couple who’s been together for 60 years, you know it’s neat, but you can’t see the full story (light spectrum). It’s probably vastly better than you can imagine. For sure, there were ups and downs, but the overall trajectory was clearly UP… you’d have to tilt your head back to see it.
When you spend time with them (photo shoot), you get to see a little more of the color of the marriage in the way they look at each other, smile, laugh, and are completely comfortable with each other. Their facial expressions dance and weave with each other’s like northern light pillars.
The heavenly light show is produced by something beyond our ability to conjure up on demand. Building something beautiful (a 60-year-old marriage) doesn’t happen immediately.
So, what are the odds? What are the odds of lining up a family shoot that turned out to be so special, and then to also witness something else incredibly special all in the same evening?
… and then I had my first Buc-ee’s experience on the way home, which was also special in its own “What in the world is even happening right now?” kind of way.
Until next time!
