Shooting the aurora - Things you should and shouldn't do

Unless you’ve been living in a deep cave somewhere without sunlight and water for the past week or so, you’ll have all heard about the sensational aurora display on Thursday night and this came after the even more epic event in May. Now I wouldn’t consider myself a seasoned aurora shooter by any stretch, there are folks that spend their whole careers focussed on this kind of thing in the nordics and elsewhere cold (high latitudes) but I’ve had a go now a few times in different circumstances and scenarios so here’s what I’ve figured out so far, as ever with these things a combination of hearing the stories people recount, reading the myriad of stuff online (some useful, some useless echo chamber garbage) and as with everything landscape photography, a consolidation of these plus the things I’ve learnt myself on location doing it for real. 

On 10th May 2024 (less than a week as I write this) we on planet earth experienced what felt like a religious, biblical, spiritual, [insert your favourite epic phrase] event - A KP9+ display of the aurora borealis or northern lights which stretched as far south as Romania, Spain, the Alps, even California! 

The astro nerds will correct me here but by all accounts this was caused by a G4 class solar storm with a number of CMEs (coronal mass ejections) emitted by a huge coronal hole several times larger than normal heading towards earth. For reference CMEs aren’t that frequent, a couple a month perhaps from what I’ve seen and most don’t have an earth directed component. Am I down with the lingo yet? 😃 Accompanying this on Friday there were something like 20 solar flares released too, again, I only see one of these kinds of alerts on my phone per month if that sometimes. But 20 in one evening! My alert app of choice (Glendale) even told me about an “INTERPLANETARY SHOCK” happening, the first time I saw that one I nearly sh*t myself 😂 But look all in all I’ve been looking at the readings and learning about them for long enough to know this was a huge huge event, perhaps a once in 20 year moment and the first since our cameras have been good enough to capture the images they do. 

For a bit of context, I’ve probably been out to shoot aurora maybe 10 - 15 times in the 3 or so years. Suffice is to say my first experience of seeing them was game changing, a real moment in life where you encounter something you’ve never experienced before (seeing them on screens before you’ve been outside looking up with your own eyes is incomparable). I was in Iceland at the edge of winter, I’d been in the highlands but nearly got stuck in an old failing 4WD camper so had to get out. I subsequently found out that folks in Africa say: if you want to go into the desert and have fun you go in a Defender. If you want to come out alive you go in a Landcruiser. How right they are 😂 Anyway, with some days to kill on the south coast in hunkered down in Vik. I noticed some chatter at the table next to me in the Black Sand pizza place (EPIC PIZZA!) and started looking at the readings. Sure, a KP5 was predicted so out I went to a couple of familiar spots and then ensued several hours of oohs and ahhs at the Reynisdrangar stacks and then Skogarfoss. I was lucky too that the Perseid meteor shower was in good show too to add some sauce to a couple of my images.

Fast forward over the next few hours and after that first experimence i was hooked. Not quite obsessed but I always watch the forecasts now. Some of the other attempts I’ve made are as follows: I went back into the highlands the next year and summited a tall peak in the night out near Langisjor but the display was a poor one. When the lights did come out it all looked a bit odd, everything was so dark with green light projected onto it it didn’t make a good photo. I’ll try again with a better display forecast. There have been a couple of displays in my home area, the Peak District and I took a nice shot of a little known spot that is hardly shot at the best of times never mind with aurora behind it, a small stone barn with a little tree leaning over it. I tried shooting them in a yellow/amber wind warning at Stokksnes one winter, that was fun 🤩 and this year in Lofoten, whilst the stubborn high pressure and nil winds for several days was a pain for the usual high octane high atmosphere coastal stuff, what this does leave you with is perfect aurora shooting conditions every night so me and my mate Stu went out most evenings and really worked a lot of the foreground areas we’d got to know well. On one evening we saw a KP8 display and it was once again mesmerising. But nothing, even in a more southern lattitude like the UK, prepares you for what I saw on Friday. 

As chance sometimes would bring you a tray of cupcakes (when often all it serves up is a shit sandwich) and remind you there is hope, I was already in Scotland last week and therefore had easy access to both epic scenery and compositional potential (the bane of most aurora shooting attempts - more on this later) plus dark sky areas. The complication was the day before the display I killed my Z7ii in an ancient oak woodland! It was raining hard all day, smug in the thought that my camera was bullet proof, I didn’t bother with the rain cover, the terrain was difficult and the woodland imagery incredible. But soon after a nice shot the camera packed up. Later, as I saw what was about to unfold the following evening on the forecasts I had to react. I was up in the north West of the highlands but drove several hours to Glasgow, got camera sorted and then drove back to Dalmally for the night. Kilchurn Castle was the idea. Thanks Martin, another Scottish friend of mine for discussion and suggestion. Clear skies were predicted. North facing. Bortle Class 2 dark sky. Wind speeds at nil meaning a perfect reflection possible. 4 mins back to hotel and a short walk from car. Bingo I thought. But. Here in lies the second difficulty with aurora - it appears wherever the f**k it wants to! Suffice is to say that whilst my carefully crafted comp worked and despite some cloud when it had become dark enough plenty of green and purples with good pillars (even bluey ones) up in the sky for a nice shot or two, the unbelievable corona burst you see in this articles cover image began to form behind me and overhead. I could see it clearly with my eyes including all the colours you see in the shot. Sure not as vividly but it was crystal clear, dark skies are critical to being able to see the aurora colour and shapes and with an intense display like this they are all visible to the naked eye. Let me get on to some of the points it’s worth thinking about when you shoot aurora. 

Planning. 

Let’s face it, unless you’re in a dedicated location where aurora is common as are good compositions to shoot it over (see below) you’ll likely just be reacting like a headless chicken at home when you get surprised by the chatter on social media for a big display. The afficianados however (polite term for astro nerds!) will be regularly watching all kinds of apps and forecasting services during the winter months (ie when the sky is dark enough). The best apps I use to do this are as follows:

• Glendale. 
• Aurora Alerts
• Hello Aurora
• Facebook group called ‘Aurora UK’
• Local Nordic weather apps 

The main measuring scale you’ll see is called KP which is an ‘ok’ rough guide to the strength of display you’ll see. But it’s not accurate in the moment (it is an average over a few hours) and the aurora bursts can fluctuate substantially within the space of minutes. Glendale is the best minute by minute source for whether the aurora is getting stronger or not. Get familiar with the 3 phases growth expansion and recovery so you understand what’s likely to happen imminently. 

Next, you need to understand the different location factors that will maximises your chances of seeing and shooting them. The darker your skies the better, the Bortle class system is best to measure this, apps like Clearoutside and TPE will tell you how dark where you are or are planning to go is. You ideally want to be in a dark skies site (Bortle 3/4 and below) to maximise how vivid the colours you’ll see are. It is possible to see the aurora in brighter areas near cities but you need stronger displays (KP6 or 7 upwards) but the colours will be feint and washed out. You can push them in post sure but it ain't the same. But when the sky is already dark the vividity of the colours are insane.

You should make sure you are facing a dark sky  area too without too much light pollution st the horizon so look at how dark things are several kilometres into the distance (or 20-30 if you are higher up on a hill or mountain, your sight line will be further away as your elevation increases) as well. 

Lastly, generally speaking you’ll want to be facing north. Now, this is a rough guide based on the premise that the further south you are, the further from the main aurora latitude you’ll be (the aurora first normally appears in and over the arctic and extends south the stronger it gets) so you will first begin to see it as a feint green glow on the horizon to the north. As the strength increases the aurora gets higher in the sky and once it begins to move overhead then frankly any direction is possible. You’ll probably need to improvise with surprise directions to shoot in in the strongest displays! Forget those carefully planned foregrounds you had lined up or even executed in the blue hour. You could always just sky replace your aurora image over your foregrounds and many of the best images do that but for me it takes a little something away if my sky isn’t as I saw it over the rest of the scene. Focus stacking is about as far as I’m prepared to go re. Compositing. But each to their own, there’s no right or wrong.

A note on “Northern lights” photo tours. 

The bottom line is that you do need a little luck if you are intent on going on a specific trip to see or shoot the aurora. All these phototours that pitch it as a guarantee or use the term ‘aurora borealis’ in the title of the workshop, or individuals claiming they have somehow seen aurora on 15 of the last 17 photo trips are just marketing wafflers, over-promising something that just cannot be guaranteed at all. Yes, the more northerly you travel in Europe the better chance you stand but equally the same places are more susceptible to large amounts of cloud and rain or snow and if the sky isn’t clear you won’t see anything.  Iceland is a great example. So many good displays aren’t seen at all because of the regular bad weather in Iceland. Including the recent once in a lifetime display. No one in Iceland photographed that, which was a shame. The only way around it is to give yourself plenty of days (7 or more minimum) and plenty of flexibility (hire your own car and be prepared to just grab a hotel anywhere or sleep in the car after you’ve chased the gaps in the cloud for several hours) is the only way to do it. Don’t be disappointed by trips or people that promise or suggest they will deliver the northern lights, it’s mostly chance and you stand the best hope of managing the variables that contribute by giving yourself lots of time and flexibility. You are unlikely to pop to Iceland for the weekend, book in advance on a given night for a “northern lights tour” and see them. It’s just the way it is. 

Now. Let’s get onto how you make good images. 

1. Composition is king. The number 1 frustration with a lot of aurora images in my view is there is very rarely a compelling subject which is then part of a broader scene expressive of a place in time upon which the aurora then provides a rare and unforgettable take on the image. And to be fare, unless you’re in a dedicated location where aurora is both common and there is a multitude of easy access and fantastic backdrops to be able to move between as the aurora moves (ie. Lofoten!) then it’s very difficult to both plan, then react to the forecast and execute the plan. But with exceptional aurora forecasts sometimes you just need to commit. Get to something that in its own right (ie with no aurora) would make a beautiful shot with either nice foreground or a high vista view or lone tree as part of this. Although the aurora becomes the main focal point of the image, when a silhouetted farm structure in a field is all you can muster, whilst nice, anyone that goes up Am Teallach to wild camp like another of my friends did on Friday and is then set up to take a once in a lifetime image placing aurora in an already outstanding scene is the one that takes the memorable image. If only my friend watched the aurora alerts like I do eh rather than going to sleep early and missing most of it. He did tell me he woke at 2am for a pee, emerging from his tent bleary eyed and sat watching the strange magenta sky show for a few minutes before returning to the bivvy. At least he saw it.
   
   
2. Technical execution of shots optimally is difficult. There are some basics here, none of this will be of much news. You need to shoot wide open and with an f2.8 lens or lower ideally. F4 is possible but you will need brighter displays, darker skies and less light pollution and a good camera with strong low light performance to be able to push the iso high (go to 3200 which keeps the denoising easy, whilst you can push to 6400 you’ll then have to work carefully with noise reduction via a few different methods to see what works best). The reason for this is exposure, you’ll want your images to be as bright as possible with a caveat that I’ll come to in a sec but by shooting as fast as you can, with fast moving displays like this you need to be shooting at about 2.5 seconds tops else you’ll lose the structure in the moving rays and some of the colours may all get blurred and squished together making processing a headache. With slower moving arcs and pillars, 5-8 seconds is normally fine. But you need to make sure you have room on the right of the histogram to accommodate any sudden pulses in light or bursts in luminance and the longer you’re exposing for the more risk is these will be blown out. My first aurora images were all 10-15 seconds, I was a little warey of pushing the iso beyond 1250ish and whilst nice, the aurora in most of the shots were blurry and smooshed together a bit, sure the colours were nice but they lacked separation and oomph. A lot of aurora shots end up like this, with a messy splodge of colour in the sky instead of something more structured and beautiful. And in these early scenarios I should have shot up to 3200 and down at about 5ish seconds. Remember. There are a lot of factors to consider here in getting your exposure right. It will take some trial and error. Don’t stress. You’ll get the hang in the end. In darker skies it’s easier. With less light pollution it’s easier. With a wide aperture lens it’s easier. With a high ISO performance camera it’s easier.
   
   
3. The next technical consideration is focus. As I’ve alluded to you should be shooting a decent subject too and this might be something close to your feet. You’re going to need to blend two maybe three images together here, i know this puts some people off but you’re depth of field will be very shallow so to get a front to back sharp image it’s a must. Now, your frames for the sky and aurora should be focussed at infinity so your stars and aurora are sharp. Focus manually on a bright start or some good dslrs do this now with low light AF-assist (beware I’ve found this to be only 50/50 accurate sometimes it misses focus and everything is fuzzy) then shoot your sky frames. On my z7ii when I turn the camera off and on again it defaults focus to infinity which is helpful. Next, shoot two or three frames focused on your foreground or subject. You may need to light it with a headtorch. You should be able to expose for a little longer too if it isn’t windy, I tend to drop my iso down to circa 800-1250 and expose for 60 seconds for each foreground frame then focus stack these, and then blend in the sky. Avoid a completely dark or silhouette image, it just looks a bit naff.
   
   
4. Post processing. I mean, how long is a piece of string here?! All our usual yardsticks to aid us in processing either tastefully (what an emotive concept this one is, don’t get me started!) or as your creative vision intended, these go out of the window because we don’t have the usual “as our eye saw things” to go by. It helps to have seen ALOT of aurora images online, there are many but you have to look really hard to find ones where you don’t quickly get irked by something. Then when you throw into the mix the multitude of tools we have at our disposal in software, the world truly is your oyster. I will talk about some of the things I’m warey of now that I’ve seen, shot and processed quite a few aurora images. They largely are to do with managing a) the contrast and difference between lights and darks and b) the colours, both their saturation and luminance but this must be set within the overall temperature of the whole scene. All too often I see overly warm aurora images with very sickly greens and yellows, I call it Incredible Hulk Green or Donald Trump yellow! By contrast some of the best Nordic shots I see have a really natural cool feel to them, gentle brighter subtle blues or cooler dark tones and in turn sumptuous aqua greens. From what I’ve seen now in the Uk we get a lot of the vivid pinks and yellows in strong displays and these need to be carefully managed. There are many ways to adjust all of the above. But my advice (currently anyway) would be avoid the global contrast slider. And avoid the HSL panel, the latter especially can screw with the gradient boundaries and transitions if you have multiple shades in shot. Instead, after usually starting by boosting the overall exposure by up to one stop (if you’ve exposed properly) and occasionally adjusting the overall temperature down to about 4000 if you haven’t shot in that already, go straight to the curves tool and play about with the individual red, green and blue curves individually. Tiny adjustments only pls! Secondly, after you’ve pulled out a bit of colour, if the overall temperature still isn’t quite right then go to the colour balance adjustment layer in PS and work on the mid tones. This tool is similar to the curves tool but a bit simpler, you can be very clear about adding more green to the mid tones than you can on a curve. Lastly, if you have some structure in the auroras you want to bring out, add a small amount of clarity without ruining the soft vividity of the colours you should have created by now. Remember to be doing all of the above on your sky only and this should be masked out of the foreground. Editing the foreground is less complicated, in essence keep saturation low, keep it dark (it is night time after all) accepting some slight cool green/aqua illumination if you must and keep it uncontrasted so your blacks aren’t crushed. If you really want to go the whole hog add a small amount of dodging on brighter edges that might pick up some of the light from the sky if you’re in a dark skies area (ideally Bortle 3 or 2). That’s probably it in terms of processing. I used to play about a lot with the basic tonality panel, moving and pushing highlights, whites, shadows, blacks but although you might get somewhere after a while you’ve completely lost touch with both reality and the impact of what you’re doing and what the image needs leaving things a bit bit and miss and frankly, to chance. 

So to conclude, here’s my checklist of things to remember when planning and executing your aurora shots. 

• Dark sky sites (Bortle 3 and lower) will give you more vivid colours, don’t think in brighter skies like over the Uk cities you can jack the vibrance and saturation and get away with it. Your dark areas will take on colour too and look poor and you’ll then be locked in an endless cycle of correction that will not complete. 
• You need nautical twilight to pass before it’s dark enough to see them in strong displays KP5 ish or more, ideally you want astronomical twilight to darken the sky further to really see them. 
• Light pollution weakens what you’ll see, shoot towards darker areas away from cities at the horizon not just above you and where you’re tripod is. Use a night sky or light pollution filter to help remove the orange light further. 
• You need clear skies (goes without saying)
• Shoot as fast as you can the stronger (fast moving) the display is. 
• Push your iso as far as you know you can handle in post production with denoise (I can go to 2000 or at a push 3200 on the z7ii no problem with a well exposed shot)
• Don’t over expose or shoot to far to the right and leave yourself some room for intense bright bursts during your long exposure - you don’t want white blow out in your images if there is a momentary bright pulse of light. 
• Focus at infinity for sharp stars and focus manually to do this. 
• Don’t forget to include a good subject or foreground in your image and make sure you expose for it to avoid a silhouette image. 
• Get down lower so you can tilt up to the sky
• An ultra wide angle lens is best but 24mm will still work 
• Shoot with an f2.8 lens or lower with a good wide angle prime, it is possible to shoot with an f4 lens but you will have to work harder to get enough light into your camera to stop your need to expose for too long and risk blurring the aurora textures and colours 
• Process gently, starting by boosting exposure then moving immediately to the curves tool to work in individual channels to add sufficient contrast between colours in a way that accentuates shape and texture. 
• Your starting white balance should be cool, between 4-5000 kelvin maximum. In weaker displays (KP1-3) the WB tends to be cooler with aquas and greens present mostly. KP4-6 displays tend to bring the warmer colours like pinks, reds, yellows, oranges and some magenta. From KP7 upwards there’s the possibility for much rarer blues and deep purples so don’t destroy these with poor WB control. I have read some pretty cool science explaining why the different colours appear, it is to do with the height above the atmosphere at which the different molecules hit our atmosphere and disperse their energy. 

That’s probably enough of the nerdy stuff. I’ll finish this article by reminding you: chasing and watching and shooting the aurora is a life changing experience. It is quite the most mesmeric and exciting experience, that plays out in the most peaceful and tranquil way I have ever encountered. It is always different. It is an unlimited source of cosmic energy that will leave you recharged, enthused and joyous for life, in awe at the spectacle you’ve just seen. And in the process, you might also make some really nice landscape photography images. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of them, when you look back at them they’ll take you immediately to your night under the stars and for as long as you want you’ll relive that experience, whilst at the same time wondering when your next one will be like. I live now in constant hope and anticipation of the next time I’ll see a display like the one in May. It truly was a once in a lifetime experience but really, they all are. Happy aurora hunting 😃