My best experience capturing the Northern Lights

Another one about northern lights? – Uhmm.. Yes! 😉

It took a while… many attempts.. until one day -or night to be precise- I got to see those lights that even to the naked eye look different than green , and certainly even more in camera. The particles or whatever it is in charge of the color was on fire during my visit and generally this season (end of 2022) has been amazing with colors as I read in the aurora hunting group I follow, yes that’s a thing.. resulting in awesome photography even for beginners like me.

This blog is a combination of sharing the photos I loved from this trip and sharing my experience taking these pictures and couple of videos! Typically you just get to see the pictures, but there is a lot going on for them to happen!

My favorite selfie, it´s rare to capture this color between purple and pale red depending on the exposure, but 2022 has been full of it!

I have a blog with the summary of my attempts to see the northern lights since 2016, however this deserves its own due to the amazing pictures I captured on my own. Some perseverance and experience from my previous trips paid off, and it was no coincidence I travelled North as you can imagine 😉

Click on the photo to see my Northern Lights blog!

Northern picture paradise

I will concentrate on the photos first, and later on how I “planned” my trip.. if I can even call that planning hehe, as well as my experience photographing the aurora boreal.

It almost looks like different trips, but I can assure it was all in the same place. Different shapes, intensities and backgrounds are all sponsored by mother nature.

One of the brightest displays. Photo taken on the road in front of Aurora Holidays, traffic is not exactly a problem over here!

The next photos are from different angles in the same location, the opportunities are endless when the Aurora moves all the time and you are staying in a place that offers totally different views around it.. That is the freaking beauty of it!! The first are facing North over the frozen Teno river. The last one facing South behind the cottages.

The not so necessary but cool to have… evidence that I was actually there was captured by Tiina, always super attentive to her guests . If you don´t have a proper camera, nowadays our phones are very decent but anyway the resort staff will take high quality pictures of you.

As I mentioned in my other blog, it´s surely not a must but it is worth having a guide or some kind of support (unless you are an experienced photographer), to have a good picture of you AND the aurora.

Overhead auroras

Overhead auroras are awesome to witness… and hard to share if not by video. You literally point the camera 90 degrees to the sky and after a while your neck hurts unless you are willing to lay down on the snow to see it! (follow me for more tips!) but I was also playing the photographer so I needed to move quickly as needed 🙂

Without an external element in the picture you may not realize how this is like, but it does cover a big part of the sky literally looking direcly above you.

This came up a little blurry, looking directly overhead

Colorful sky!

My other “favorite” pictures.. wow that´s hard to say, are the next ones. There is something about composing these cute cottages against different colors on the southern skies.. uffff

I admit I feel absolutely proud and a little shocked that I shot these. In my universe this is eye-candy!! The trees, the cottages, the snow, even the accidental angle when fighting with my tripod 😉 and those lights behind look super pretty to me! The most common lights are green, so for me getting more colors was awesome!

I accidentally captured the movement of a shooting star, there were A LOT of shooting stars that night! It was amazing

Wider view of the colorful lights behind.

More beautiful color combination, now in the upper part of the resort. As said, I love this place since the scenary can vary very nicely from north, east, west and south if you are lucky to witness some activity that over time was all over the place. For example, if it´s only a discrete arc on the far north horizon.. there is not that much variation you can make normally (more likely the case the more “south” you are) , here I could play with the scenery as there was activity in different points during my 2 clear nights, and I was located really really north.

One more of this pale red, you may think that is just the dark sky but it´s really aurora color..

My first real-time aurora videos!

Let´s be honest, it didn´t go as planned that it´s painfully funny to remember what went wrong 😉 but it´s just another excuse to try again. However, I did get something and as blurry as it got I want to share!!

Nice Aurora movement captured live! I refuse to be helped until I have no other option ;D

When I say it “went wrong”, what do I mean?

When it became show time, it was precisely at the coldest moment and the rest of my batteries were pretty low. Me and my camera had been out for several hours already at minus temperatures.
Over the excitement to point the camera to the sky, I accidentally removed it from the tripod and I had no time to fix it, so I just took it with my hands. This does not help with quality. (it is what it is!)
My hands were hurting horribly but I simply cannot handle the buttons with my gloves, soo.. that justifies all my noises and complaints! 😉 Deep down I was super happy believe me, only my hands did not agree with the rest of me. I am still NOT muting anything as it shows what exactly was going on, being amazed and in pain at the same time hehe.
When I shot the MOST AMAZING and colorful overhead movement of this trip, almost lying on the snow to get it above me (remember , tripod not helping me here) .. the camera turned off!! and apparently it´s not smart enough to save what had been recorded. As reference, my previous Samsung S10+ phone does save it somehow, as the same happened to me some other time. The point is, at the most critical time…… I could not save that memory.

This time it went a little better but still suffering with cold hands and moving camera!

The last one, my brain also froze when moving camera quickly! (don´t do that) but after second 35 it gets more stable. I keep original video because it´s all part of the experience and to enjoy but also to learn from! It´s VERY tempty to show the entire sky but should be done very very slowly.

The story behind my trip

I had not been following the aurora activity too much until I realized it was already November and I had not seen them in 2022 (“I love your problems” part 1) At some point it became a tradition and I promised myself to at least try once once year, and 2022 was almost over… So I started monitoring more closely the short term news, predictions and the weahter in Lapland.

Long story short, I checked the short term weather in my beloved Utsjoki and all forecasts from different sources indicated clear skies for 2 nights at least, and also read from one of my previous guides that a magnetic storm was predicted for the next days. That is usually the combination I´m looking for and I only fly north last minute if these 2 elements are favorable.. hoping I´m lucky and both predictions come true., or at least the weather one!

With two other guests + Tiina and Sonia from Aurora Holidays looking at the Northern Lights, while trying a telescope too!

So there I am, booking a flight on a Friday afternoon to flight on Saturday from Helsinki to Ivalo, and then take the only mini bus going further north to Utsjoki. Obviously I contacted Aurora Holidays family and luckily for me and also due to the low season, I had no problem to get me a cottage 😉

My photography experience

I bought a second hand camera and lenses capable of northern lights photos but still not super fancy that I wouldn’t know how to use properly -nor pay for it- 😅 So here I am with an old Sony A7S and Samyang wide angle lenses. For “me photos” I still need someone else to take them with even better lenses or skills but at least I can take all my pictures concentrating on the landscape and perhaps a couple of them with a blurry and more symbolic me 😀 I´m happy enough if I know that blurry human there is me! For example the photo below:

The most difficult part is not even the settings,.with practice you learn how to switch quickly from one ISO level or exposure time to another, the problem is to do that when it’s really cold and in the dark! , it’s a science on its own to know your own limits and gadgets that make your life easy!

With thin gloves I still don’t feel I can manipulate the buttons or the headlamp so I always end up with naked hands for several minutes, and at -20 that cannot be for long and it can be an extra stress 😀 I made some bad decisions and almost broke the tripod in the process of adjusting the camera to point it 90 degrees up to shot the overhead aurora.

Importance of the tripod!

I read many stories about investing in a good tripod especially in extreme cold conditions, and now I know!! I upgraded mine this trip for a mid-range ball head tripod, and yet I had difficulties to manipulate it…or maybe it´s just a dummy user problem? Could be.. ;D

In any case.. one position is easy to handle. If you are “only” trying to capture the lights in the northern horizon as most people end up experiencing this is ok, but assuming you get lucky and the aurora can be all over the place including directly overhead (“I love your problems” part 2), a tripod that easily moves 360 degrees is a must!

Where did I stay? Exactly in this cottage illuminated by the lights!

Note to myself: Now I have enough time to get another tripod because some of my blurry pictures happened when I managed to “disconnect” the heavy camera from the tripod at the worst possible time. It takes time and practice but it´s not like I can practice every weekend at -20 degrees 😉

Aurora building up. I love it when the activity is “vertical” It gives another dimension!

And now I totally bored you and deviated, the point is my friends, the TRIPOD QUALITY IS IMPORTANT! in case of moving auroras and in case you are moving a lot in your location. I took pictures from different places, I had to go up and down some stairs so it was an adventure!! I swear..

Or… just enjoy the Aurora!

In best case you just enjoy it, never remove your gloves and voilá! That used to be me, but now I am trying to take my own pictures and that comes with a price during winter time!

Absolutely NO REGRETS for the extra hassle though and I´m happy to share the results 😉 Just saying.. do appreciate it once you know it takes some effort from this cold-hands lady…

One more.. I seriously got A LOT of activity. I spent HOURS looking and photographing them. Pretty awesome 2 nights!

How about the light reflection on the windows?

More cottage inspired pictures..

Bright lights over the restaurant and the cottages, moving auroras are the most difficult to get right at least for me 😉 Here it would be nice to have the widest possible angle lenses, fisheye kind of.. but who knows maybe next time!

These photos were literally the last I shot before I went to bed, around 2:30 am.. , the lights were there, not moving much but there. In this case I focused more on photography itself, with nice exposure it just looks so pretty, still amazed by the red-ish background visible on camera. To the naked aye, here you see clearly the green arch only, not the red background. In the strongest momens in pictures above, the shape of a different color is totally visible!