Friday Photo #265 – Ryten Aurora

Photo: Aurora over Fuglhuken from Ryten, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. March 2, 2017. 20:03

I’ve already posted another image from this night: Friday Photo #218. So if you read that you already know that I was supposed to have gone skiing with some friends, but saw the aurora forecast and changed my mind at the last moment, eventually making my way up Ryten in the fading twilight.

While the main aurora display was off to the right of this image, it didn’t have the best composition. So after shooting that for a while, I looked for something else. Important tip – never get too focused on the aurora themselves that you forget to move and shoot different compositions. I see this happening a lot when I’m out, people just standing shooting the same image 1000 times. Yes, the aurora moves, but so should you!

So even without the brightest of the aurora, I felt this image had a stronger overall composition, and is something I likely would have photographed if the aurora were replaced with clouds. At 14mm, my lens still wasn’t wide enough to capture enough foreground the anchor the image, while also capturing enough of the sky. So shot two images, one for the foreground and one for the sky – same setting for each image. Later after merging, I cropped to 4:5, which I have become quite fond of over the last years. Perhaps it’s only memories from shooting film on a 4:5 camera back in the day.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8
14mm
ISO 2000
f 3.2
10 seconds
WB Daylight
2 images – foreground, sky