Photographer Pierre T. Lambert got very lucky on a flight from Chicago to Seoul, South Korea recently. While flying near the arctic circle, he decided to just... try taking a photo out of his airplane window. To his surprise, his camera captured the glowing Aurora Borealis that was invisible to the naked eye.
The aurora season is here again and I figured I’d do a short post here regarding when and where to photograph it. When I’m browsing pictures online, sometimes seeing aurora pictures and checking the comment section, I see a lot of questions and responses from people that all have something to say about the northern lights (aka aurora). As someone who has seen and photographed the aurora many times, here is my little guide.
In December 2014, I decided that I wanted to practice shooting the night sky in order to expand my photography skills. Of course, I made every possible mistake. My compositions were completely off, I severely underexposed or blew out the sky and the images were not sharp.
With winter around the corner, I thought I'd write a quick aurora guide. I'm a professional landscape photographer. I also guide lots of photo tours and have done many in the north. I'd like to help all of you out with a bunch of stuff regarding auroras.
The crown of the (Ant)arctic. Known in the northern hemisphere as the Aurora Borealis (northern lights and as the Aurora Australis in the southern hemisphere, these brightly colored bands of moving and waving light are a majestic display in the night sky.
Back on January 31st, photographer William Briscoe set up his cameras near Fairbanks, Alaska, and shot this awe-inspiring 360-degree interactive video of a lunar eclipse in the sky above the dancing green glow of the Northern Lights.
Want to see what the Northern Lights look like up close? Ross Franquemont can show you. A U-2 spy plane pilot by day and a photographer by night, Franquemont recently had the privilege of photographing the Aurora Borealis from his cockpit at 70,000 feet.
After photographing the solar eclipse in Idaho, I couldn't resist continuing my "long-service leave" and returning to Canada's Yukon Territory for some early season aurora hunting in September 2017. I had just two and half weeks (one New Moon cycle) based with my friends and supporters Andrea and Florian Lemphers at Shallow Bay, north of the capital Whitehorse.
We just had a beautiful Aurora Australis hit New Zealand recently. I was fortunate enough to catch a quiet spot to myself where I could take in the atmosphere and shoot a few images.
Aurora photographers have been buzzing in recent days about a newly spotted phenomenon in the sky. It's a purple ribbon of light that differs in appearance from standard aurora. After being confirmed as a new phenomenon, it was given a new name: "Steve."
Photographer Dale Sharpe is a determined guy. It took two rings and two trips to the arctic circle, but he finally got engaged to the one person he loves, capturing the epic moment on camera while the northern lights danced above their heads.
Icelandic photographer Sigurdur William trekked to the Kerid volcanic crater lake at night a couple of weeks ago and captured this amazing photo of the northern lights and starry night sky reflected in the waters.
About a year ago, I was asked if I would like to do a wedding photography at night. The bride Erika had seen a photo of a moon halo I took earlier that year. In that photo, I had two friends that I ran into that night. They were out chasing the northern lights and I asked if I could take a photo of them together with the moon halo.
On New Year's Eve, you might think the people in Times Square were treated to the best light show... but you'd be wrong. Photographer Aryeh Nirenberg, enjoying a full row of seats on his flight from JFK to Reykjavik, Iceland, was treated to a more spectacular show.
Over the years I've seen lots of different phenomena in the sky, but one that has been on my bucket list for quite some time is the very rare lunar fog bow. I've seen photos of it, but I've never managed to capture it in real life... until now.
The Northern Lights have been lighting up the sky over Iceland these past few days, and stunning photos of the auroras have been lighting up the Internet.
By day, Christiaan van Heijst is an airline pilot who flies 747 jumbo jets around the world. By night (and often by day as well), Van Heijst is a talented photographer who captures breathtaking photos from his seat in the cockpit.
Capturing the Northern Lights in real time only recently became doable, with beautiful videos like this one popping up to show the potential of cameras that can handle high-ISO with low noise. But the folks at OZZO Photography took this idea to new heights... literally. They strapped a Sony a7S II to a drone and shot the northern lights from the air.
An aurora borealis, sometimes referred to as a polar light, is a natural light display in the sky, predominantly seen in the high latitude regions near the Arctic Circle.
Berlin-based professional adventure photographer Benjamin Jaworskyj was recently flying to a workshop in Norway when he got a chance to test the low-light capabilities of his Sony a7S II: filming the dim Northern Lights in the skies outside.
Watching the aurora borealis dance above your head is a transformative human experience that thousands capture from places like Norway and the Canadian Rockies every year. But watching it dance beneath your feet? That's an experience only a fortunate few will ever get to have.
We’ve all seen those images over the past few years (popping up in our Facebook feeds or in the media) depicting spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights from Great Britain, Ireland or the lower 48 in the US. Regardless of the location, they’re pretty amazing images.
But beneath the wow-factor and thousands of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ lurks a nasty little integrity issue. These aurora images may be photographic eye-candy, but many of them are pure high fructose corn syrup.
Back in 2013, we shared the work of photographer Richard Gottardo, …
Our sun goes through a solar cycle with an average length of 11 years, and the period of greatest solar activity during each cycle is called the solar maximum. Photographer Henry Jun Wah Lee visited Iceland during the latest solar maximum and shot photos for this dazzling time-lapse film titled "Apotheosis."
Finnish photographer Tiina Törmänen wanted to capture how small and fragile humans are in the unfathomable expanse of space, so she shot a series of stunning self-portraits showing her silhouette dwarfed by a backdrop of stars and the Northern Lights. The series is titled "Wanderer."
If you've always dreamed of taking pictures of the northern lights, the video above will give you a small taste of what it's like. Swedish astrophotographer Göran Strand captured the behind-the-scenes footage recently when he drove out into the wilderness in the dead of night to chase auroras.
Seeing and photographing an aurora is probably on many a photographer’s bucket list, but only a handful …
If you're like us, seeing the Aurora Borealis in person is high on your bucket list... quite possibly right at the top. The idea of watching this spectacular natural light show in real-time is thrilling, and while you don't get there sitting on your couch reading this, the video above by Ole C. Salomonsen of Arctic Light Photo is about as close as you're likely to get without being there in person.
Captured over the course of several months in Norway, Salomonsen has compiled the best of the best real-time footage he was able to capture with the Sony a7S into 5 minutes of northern lights bliss.
Conveying the grandeur of the Aurora Borealis is a serious challenge for a photographer. How are you supposed to capture the splendor of the event, give it a sense of scale, and somehow imbue that photograph with the emotion involved in actually witnessing the polar spirits for yourself?
There probably isn't a magical mixture of ingredients that will yield the ideal northern lights photograph, but the image above by photographer Max Rive is one of the closest we've seen, and he was kind enough to share the details behind it with us.
Most Aurora Borealis videos are time-lapses, because cranking the ISO high enough for bright real-time video would normally result in a noisy mess. That, however, was before cameras like the Sony A7s came along.