THE PLAN
My #1 bucket list item for quite a few years has been to see the Northern Lights. A few years ago when photography became my hobby and passion, I became even more determined to not only see the lights, but to photograph them. My husband Jim was on board, he wanted to see them, too.
I'm a planner, and I planned many months in advance in order to optimize my chances for success. I viewed maps of the Aurora Circle and Fairbanks is located nearly square on it. We've visited Fairbanks before so I felt comfortable choosing that location. It seems that the Aurora is historically more active at the time of the vernal equinox and March is the month with the clearest skies in the Fairbanks area. The solar activity that sparks the Aurora has an 11 year cycle with the next peak in 2013 so I felt 2012 should be a good year, also, and leaves me another year for a back up plan. The second week of March produced a full moon but I decided this was acceptable.
I found lodging at the Aurora Borealis Lodge, located about 20 mi north of Fairbanks on the side of a mountain. There is a main lodge where guests are brought each evening between 10pm and 2am for Aurora viewing, and next door is a 4-unit rental cabin, each room having 2 large north facing windows. The rental allowed us to be there all night, sleep, cook, get comfortable and settled for 6 nights. We rented it for the nights of Mar 7-12. So on the morning of March 6 we woke at 3am and began the journey, flying Memphis to Houston, to Seattle, to Anchorage, and finally to Fairbanks. We arrived around 7pm, greeted by nearly blizzard conditions. They had received about 12 inches of snow that day and it continued through the night. Our watches said 10pm although the local time was 7pm. We'd been up since 3am and were exhausted. Our first night was just a quick trip over to the Holiday Inn Express for sleep. Although "we" had arrived, our luggage had not. A quick stop at the front desk for essentials and we crashed, only to be awakened at 10pm by the airport calling to tell us our luggage had arrived, and again at 11pm by the hotel to tell us it was in the lobby. Yay!
A WHITE WELCOME
about 20 mi from town would allow us to get out for meals, etc, assuming the weather would permit, but we wanted to be prepared to stay if necessary. Provisions included a new pair of serious boots for me and a package of chemical hand warmers. It was COLD. Here is the lodge, our room, and our awesome view out the 2 large
north facing windows.
We visited the main lodge next door where coffee, hot chocolate and hot tea were available, then settled in our little room to anxiously await darkness. Darkness came, and so did more snow, and more snow.... There was cloud cover all night. One night down, 5 to go.
Now by this point it was apparent I had contracted a stomach flu, probably from all those shared germs on the plane. I won't go into detail, but just know that for the next 3 days it added another interesting and not very pleasant layer to my photography challenges.
THE AURORA !!!
The second night we caught our first glimpse of the Lights. Our host had told us that if we suspect we see them but aren't quite sure, just point our camera to the sky, take the picture, then look at the LCD on the camera. If the spot appears green it's the Aurora. When it's faint the color will show up first in the camera. That little trick worked great! I was thrilled to see anything. This night it was a faint showing but the following 4 nights were sensational.
Now for my camera cohorts I will try to describe this from a photography viewpoint. The rest of you just enjoy the photos, this will get a little technical :-) I had my Canon 7D and a rented (www.lensrentals.com) Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 ultrawide lens. I own the Canon 10-22mm but I wanted/needed the fixed aperture of 2.8. I wanted to keep exposure time at a minimum (2-4 sec) so I used 2.8 and ISO's of 1600 and 3200. I had a total of 106gb of cf cards, and 3 camera batteries. In retrospect, the lens choice was excellent, the cards more than adequate, and I could have done just fine with 1 battery, which surprised me. It didn't deplete after one night of use. My Manfrotto 190CXPRO4 legs (tripod) and Acratech Ultimate Ballhead were perfect for the job. Very pleased with them.
The photo on the right is the main lodge where visitors can come at night, taken just outside our cabin. Photo below was taken at moonrise.
The temperature was brutal and that was the biggest challenge. If you breathe anywhere near your camera a layer of ice forms on it. I placed a circular scarf around my neck to pull up over my nose and mouth and my first breath created a layer of ice on my glasses. I yanked it back down then had to go inside to fix my glasses. Once there, the ice layer won't just go away. Going inside is another challenge. The ice layer on my glasses thickens so obviously I can't just safely carry my camera into a heated room. I had taken gallon size ziploc bags to place it in, since my camera bag isn't very air tight. I carry a Domke that just velcros and latches. The plastic bags were cumbersome while wearing gloves and too small. Then I noticed a fellow photographer had one of those insulated zipper bags they sell at the grocery store checkout to carry home your ice cream and milk. Perfect! It was worth a trip to the grocery the next day to get one of those. My wonderful husband made the trip since I still wasn't feeling too great.
Going inside for a break occasionally is very necessary. At one point I had been out for a little over an hour. A fellow photographer asked where I was from. I looked at her and said "mmmppkrsbbb" HUH?!?! I tried again..."mmmppkttbl". Adrenaline shot through me as I realized I had a problem. My first thought was stroke quickly followed by the realization my face was just paralyzed from the cold. I literally could not speak. I nodded, grabbed my tripod, and made my way back to the room where I didn't even pause long enough to secure my gear. I just left it outside on the tripod while I thawed out my face and made sure it still worked. Funny now but totally scary in the moment.
(For the photographers reading this, the magenta in the photos, by the way, is not chromatic abberation caused by the lens. It's really there in the Aurora.)
Another necessary accessory was a red LED light that I wore on a headband around my forehead. Light pollution is frowned upon at this place and the policy is no lights allowed from about 10pm on, not even in your room, unless you tightly close all window coverings. You'll need it to see camera settings and to see where you're going. Trust me, I stepped off the path and into a thigh deep snowdrift without ever dropping my tripod! So, with wool socks, North Face boots, long underwear, jeans, sweater, down hooded jacket with wool hat underneath, and silk glove liners, I was dressed the best I could. I put the hand warmers in my pocket because with anything heavier than the glove liners I couldn't operate the camera. Everything plastic became very stiff and brittle. I was afraid to even flip the levers on my tripod legs in the frigid conditions. I used a corded remote release and the cord became totally inflexible. I had been advised not to use my cordless, though I never tried it. The actual temps after dark were around -10 to -15 degrees fahrenheit with a little wind chill factored in some nights making it even colder. I suffered for these photos while my husband was inside bragging that he was watching the Aurora from the sofa in his underwear...lol. That's ok, behind the camera is where I wanted to be!
I used one of the custom settings I could register on my camera to pre-set everything the best I could on the camera. I used the widest aperture available (f/2.8), ISO 3200, and shutter speeds varied between 2-6 seconds. Longer exposures will blur because of the constant movement of the Aurora, so keep them as short as possible. Oh and I used mirror lockup to reduce vibration. I could just go out with my camera set on C1 then all I had to do was vary the shutter speed as necessary. The Tokina lens, when placed on autofocus, won't allow the focus ring to turn. Since I use a separate back button focus setting on my camera (focus is not tied in to pressing the shutter) I was able to pre-set the focus to infinity, leave it on auto focus, and just not touch the focus button. One night, I played around in the cabin with the focus ring, then subsequently spent the entire evening taking Aurora pictures out of focus. I don't recommend this! Grrrrrrrrr, I was upset, but at least I had more good nights ahead of me. Do whatever you need to do on your camera to insure the focus stays set on infinity.
As you can see in the above photo, we had a little fun with light painting, too. Yeah yeah it's light pollution but we went out back on the south side of the cabin when nobody was around to play with it. Take a flashlight, it's fun.
And last, but not least, this is me getting zapped by an Aurora beam. Love it! Mimi
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