Fisheye Schizophrenia

Every time I pull out my fisheye lens my mind goes into schizophrenia. One part says: "This will be great!" and, another part says: "Fisheyes are overused, the images look cheesy and lensy and the effect is cheap and over-used!"

My teacher at Concordia University Mark Ruwedel, a distiguished landskape photographer and a fantastic teacher, didn't like images that looked "lensy." 

Sorry Mark. Sometimes I must be allowed... 

Or do you prefer this one that is shot with the narrower 14mm lens? 

Going the extra mile - or not...

 I'm all in favor of going (or shall I say driving?) the extra mile. But sometimes it's best to stay home.

Last nights we had some guests with extra needs, so the arrangement was a little different. We were extremely lucky with the weather, and with madame Aurora. Aurora showed up at the time when I would normally pick up the clients, but yesterday was special in that way too.

Statistically there is most Northern Light activities from 10 to 11 pm. That's statistic. Yesterday there were most activities from 6 to 10 pm. A week ago there was an explosion at 2 am. To check it out for yourself, please go to http://flux.phys.uit.no/cgi-bin/mkstackplot.cgi?&comp=H&cust=&site=tro2a&Sync=& Click on real time to see what is happening now, or what happened an hour ago. Click on Prev. day to see how it has been. If the graph stays flat, there is no activity, if it goes up or down, something is happening. Be aware that even if the graph is flat we can often still see the northern lights.

This photo was taken on 25.11.2013 at 23:34
Here are the activities: http://flux.phys.uit.no/cgi-bin/mkstackplot.cgi?&comp=H&cust=&site=tro2a&Sync=1385420400&

Back on our not so usual day on Håkøya. Here are Silvia's photos taken a few hundred meters from our house.

Absolutely Magic

After struggling the last days with clouds and little solar activity Aurora made a magic appearance last night.
The weather forecast had told me that we had to go inland to find a clear sky. When we came out in the night after the theory part, Aurora was there already. We drove 15 minutes and set up the cameras.

 Aurora was still a bit shy and hiding behind the clouds. The sky was fairly clear right above our heads, But not where Aurora was. We hoped for her to rise in the sky.

Slowly she did. 

So much that we decided to move to another location. 

The famous Ersfjord.

Still Aurora kept getting bigger and bigger, going more to the south. So after a while we drove to  the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I was speechless. There are no words to describe this.

Laughter at Laughter Bay

The trip went to Lyngen this time. The lovely family from Singapore had chosen to stay in a cabin in Lyngseidet, in the middle of the Lyngen peninsula.

The lovely family from Singapore 

We had different options of where to go. We could have gone to Skibotn, but it's a place I've been visiting so much. Instead I decided to go north on the Lyngen peninsula, to Lattervik. Lattervik means Laughter Bay, and it was quite telling. Aurora was laughing when we arrived, and she kept laughing with us the whole night.

Try to spot the photographer.

To get a photo where the Aurora is mirrored in the water, it's important to find some water that is not moving too much. There is too often too much waves on the sea to get it right. The solution is a lake, if it's not frozen over, or a pond. On the beach there is almost always a pond to be found. If you're lucky you may also catch a photographer. 

The season has started!!!

The gang on their second outing.

We've been seeing Aurora from our house for quite some time now, but our first time out chasing this season was thursday September 26th. It was a dark and stormy night. Clouds everywhere. Wind, rain. We went towards Sommarøya and stopped at a beach. after several hours waiting Aurora came and said hello. We could see her through the clouds.

We managed to find a little pond with nice reflections. We got a few exposures, and then she was gone. No one said it was easy.

The same group had booked a tour the next night. This time the weather had changed, and Aurora showed us how it can be. We went to a couple of my favorite places. I let the images talk for themselves.

Epic Epic Epic

Saturday February second was nothing less than EPIC.

When we got out of the studio after the work shop Aurora made a special dance just for us. Everybody started practicing taking photographs of the northern lights, like they had just learned in class.

They all nailed it. Straight A to the whole class.

 Putting theory into practice right away.

After spending some time just outside the studio we went on to find other sceneries. We did, but the "dona Aurora" decided to take a brake. We all understood. The show she had put up must have been exhausting. 

We went to the classical place Ersfjordbotn. The scenery there is one of the best ones in the entire region. 

After a while we got hungry and decided to go to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe." or Rekvikeidet as the locals call it. After some soup and chocolate imported directly from Paris by one of the members in the group, we were ready to look at the sky once again.

What a shame, we thought. It's cloudy.  

We stayed an waited patiently because even though it was cloudy there  was lot of activity. The group was great. Nobody went inside the bus or gave up. We all waited patiently.  

I for one thought the clouds gave an extra dramatic aspect of the photos. 

 Then it started to clear up. The sky opened up more and more. 

 The people in the group were taking photos like there was no tomorrow. Like if photographing the northern lights were going out of fashion, like this would be the last chance to ever take a photograph again, like this was the end of the universe. 

 We stayed until 1:30 am. Then we figured out we were cold enough, the batteries were dead, the memory cards were full, Aurora was getting tired, and the clouds were moving in again.