Creative vacatons

Creative vacatons

Friday 21 December 2012

The chase is on

When I check the sky to see if there is Aurora activity or not I set the ISO to 5000, f/1.8 and 2 to 4 seconds exposure time, and take a handheld photo. That way I can often see Aurora with the camera, that I cannot see with my eyes. Here are some photos from the last days.


Saturday was fantastic, and Sunday was chasing, chasing and more chasing. We saw some activity in the beginning of the night and went on further inland to find some clear skies. We didn't.
This photo is taken between Nordkjosbotn and Storsteinnes. The good news was the little green dot. The bad news were the clouds. 

After seeing nothing all night we finally saw this at 3 am in the morning, in Sørbotn in Ramfjord:
Both of these are handheld "check the sky" type of images.

I got a mail from a client who had been with us earlier in the week expressing what one feels on night like this: "Did you get good sighting on Sunday night? We went out with another tour and chased the lights for many hours due to cloudy skies. Wonder if you got to the right place to see anything."
Are the other groups getting anything?
Is there a better place to be?
This is a mind game I think we all play when we are chasing. It's a part of it all. 
I think if we could see it every night it wouldn't be special or magical.
Of course it's too bad for the people who don't get to see it. It makes it all more important to chase more than one night. I also think it's a good idea to come with Creative Vacations on the first night to learn all about how to use the camera. 

On Tuesday we had a large group of Indians with us. According to the weather forecast it should clear up at night in the coastal areas. It didn't, or maybe it did. Our group had a tight program the next day so they didn't want to wait. Rumors has it that it cleared up around 2 am. I shall never know for sure. Still we managed to see a little bit, we could see that there was a lot of Aurora activity behind the clouds:

Wednesday came and I was very optimistic. The forecast looked good. 
Again it turned out wrong. The clouds were not very thick, but thick enough. We saw some at the beginning of the night:

And that was it. What to do if there is no Aurora to see? 
Be creative of course! Keep up the spirit and keep chasing!






  

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