My 100 Nights project has opened my eyes in other, unexpected ways. Inspiration comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s the environment that inspires me. On this particular night, in Iceland, last March, my friend David Wilder and I had been chasing clear skies to photograph the aurora. We started off at the famous Glacier Lagoon. We had scouted potential compositions in the daylight and were able to get a few aurora shots before crowds and clouds (surprise, surprise) thwarted our plans. We ended up making our way to Vestrahorn because it looked like the only clear skies on the map happened to be in that area. When we got there, we found these giant frost flowers on a thin layer of ice over the black sand beach. Some of these frost flowers were the size of dinner plates. We were giddy with the options for compositions, and with the soft green glow of the aurora dancing. We shot straight through the night and into the morning.
Now, my friend David is one of the most inspiring people I know. He is a professional photographer who is color blind. He only knows what colors he is editing because he can move the HSL sliders around to tell which color he is looking at by pulling them all the way up or down. To him, pinks, oranges, purples, and reds all look like shades of grey. For all the time he spent photographing sunrises, he had never seen one in its full glory, until that morning.
A company called Enchroma sent him a pair of glasses that stimulate the color receptors in his eyes that perceive color. He put them on to witness his first sunrise that day. I still get emotional thinking about filming him experience color for the first time. You might want to have a tissue handy because the video below might make your eyes leak. Watching his reaction and knowing what an amazing photographer he is made me think hard about what it means to overcome challenges.
Photographs and time lapses © Rachel Jones Ross
Jill Waterman: Photographing the aurora borealis is a unique challenge, since this luminous phenomenon moves quickly and in unpredictable patterns. Do you have any tips for making the most of the window of opportunity provided by these natural light shows?
Rachel Jones Ross: Scouting locations in advance is certainly helpful. The aurora band generally runs in the same direction, so the best viewing opportunities will depend where you are in relation to the band. For example, if you are looking for the aurora in the Canadian Rockies, you want to shoot at north-facing locations. In Iceland, the band is generally seen more east to west. When the auroral storm is strong, it won’t matter which direction you are facing!
JW: Are there specific seasons of the year or times of night that are best for planning an aurora sighting?
RJR: Yes! The chances of seeing aurora are highest during the spring equinox (March 19) and again during the fall equinox (September 23). That said, the aurora is unpredictable and can happen at any time.
JW: Since the aurora is only visible in the sky, often high up, do you have preferred lens choices or framing/composing tips to aid in recording this phenomenon and its visual effects in an image?
RJR: Compositionally, I still think about the landscape as a whole when I’m photographing the aurora. I typically reach for a fast, wide-angle lens. I think about shutter times and photographing the aurora in such a way that the stars don’t trail. Additionally, when shooting the northern lights, you want to keep shutter times below eight seconds (when the aurora is really bright, two seconds might be long enough). A fast lens will help you to keep shutter times lower.
JW: When processing your image files of the aurora, do you do anything different than when working with other nighttime phenomena in post?
RJR: Yes, typically auroras are fast moving, so my aurora shots tend to be single images. However, I have stacked multiple images for noise reduction when shooting a slow-moving aurora with the Milky Way. Processing single images is much less labour intensive in post than some of the other techniques for processing night images that we’ve talked about.
JW: After photographing the aurora overnight, you also photographed the sunrise that morning. Is there anything different about sunrise and sunset in Iceland (or in other high latitude locations) that enhances the appeal of shooting there over locations nearer to the equator?
RJR: I hadn’t considered that before. Personally, I love winter. I think it’s safe to say that winter is my favorite season for photography, so I’m drawn to northern locations.
Sunrise and sunset are certainly affected by the terrain of any given location. In the Canadian Rockies, for example, sunrises tend to be more vibrant and colorful, whereas sunsets tend to be more muted. On the outskirts of the Rockies (such as in Banff and near Abraham Lake), light doesn’t get trapped behind the mountains, which results in fiery sunrises and sunsets. The weather patterns in Iceland are unique because of its relation to the ocean. I’ve seen some of the most brilliant skies anywhere on the planet during my time in Iceland.
For night photography at northern latitudes, you can see the aurora on most clear nights. The trade-off is that you can’t see the core of the Milky Way, in Iceland, at any time of the year because it is so far north. Nearer to the equator, you can see the Milky Way core for the better part of the year. In the Southern Hemisphere, you can see the core of the Milky Way all year round.
JW: In 100 Nights of Learning, you say that in addition to being observant to changes in quality of light at night, you’ve also learned to notice the uniqueness of the light 40 minutes before sunrise and 40 minutes after sunset. Does your shooting process change between nighttime and sunrise or sunset?
RJR: In terms of techniques in the field, the only thing I do differently is the choice between autofocus and manual focus: During the day I use autofocus, whereas at night I focus manually. There was a time when I always focused manually. But I find autofocus to be so fast and accurate that it saves me a lot of time when shooting during the day.
When I think about my 100 Nights project as a whole, I’ve definitely experienced some of the romance and allure of the night sky I imagined in the beginning. But those moments are a much smaller part of the picture than I once thought they might be.
It’s those other moments—when I’ve been sleep-deprived, cold, and physically exhausted—when I really experienced the beauty of this project. Not because I had had reached my physical limits, but because I found myself supported by this amazing community of people who have pushed me to grow, mentored me, inspired me to overcome challenges, and to lead with my heart. It’s this community that has showed me how much I was really capable of, and who have patiently stood by me when I struggled.
I am not sure how many nights I’ve spent under the stars, but I can tell you that so far, I have already experienced 100 nights of community, learning, inspiration, and personal growth. I can’t wait to see what the next half of my project brings!
To read more from Rachel Jones Ross’s 100 Nights Project, click here for the companion articles in this five-part series: 100 Nights of Photography Under the Stars, 100 Nights in Bone Chilling Cold, 100 Nights Under the Clouds, 100 Nights of Learning, and 100 Nights of Inspiration.
Thank you for joining our journey into night photography! For more Visualizing the Night content, please click here: Visualizing The Night and share your enthusiasm for this theme in the comments section below, or reach out to us on social media using #visualizethenight. Thanks for reading!
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