Rachel Jones Ross Night Photography Series
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
So far, the weather is definitely the biggest challenge I’ve experienced in my 100 Nights project. So much so, that I could have called the project 100 nights of bone-chilling cold. Seriously, I keep finding new limits to the amount and duration of cold I can endure. I can’t even tell you how many nights I’ve shot in temperatures below -30° Celsius in the Canadian Rockies. But somehow, I keep coming back for more!
I joke that my camera batteries last longer than I do, because I leave my cameras running while I sit in the car trying to get warm
I still remember vividly, the first time I ever photographed the Milky Way. It was on a crop sensor camera with a kit lens, in the middle of winter. I had no composition to speak of, and the galactic core of the Milky Way was not visible at that time of year. Somehow none of that mattered: I was completely mesmerized. Seeing the cluster of stars on the back of the screen felt as if someone had pulled back a grand cosmic curtain, and allowed me to peer into the universe. From that moment forward, I was completely hooked on photographing the