Photo: Beach side campfire and Northern Lights, Storsandnes, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway.  September 16, 2014.  22:48

After two nights in the mountains I was sort of looking forward to a shower.  But unfortunately for us, the forecast was for another night of clear skies, so instead of the warming fire and soft bed of the Stamsund hostel, it was to be a night sleeping in the car.

A couple weeks earlier I had gotten in brief contact with Theo and Bee, a British couple traveling around Europe in their VW van – checkout their website and blog at VDubVanLife.  Anyhow, I sent them a text to see if they were up for an afternoon BBQ and campfire. They were.

Seeing as how we were both were sleeping in our vehicles, I figured Storsandnes would be a decent location – a good place for a BBQ, and if any northern lights decided to show up, a pretty good spot as well.

I love the month of September for its somewhat rare combination of (relatively) mild nights combined with long hours of darkness.  The only equivalent darkness you will find is in March, when you generally don’t want to spend all that much time outdoors.

As evening progressed, I decided we couldn’t carry on without a campfire, so Theo and I scoured the coast to collect driftwood for our campfire.  Luckily, this is an area seldom camped in, so there was plenty of wood to be found, enough for two nights of campfires as it turned out.

We sat around enjoying the fire for a while, but soon enough, I noticed that faint green glow in the sky; the horizon still carrying the colors of the day’s end.  At that point, the photographer kicks in and any enjoyment of the campfire disappears.  Well, that was until Theo and I thought the girls sitting around the fire with northern lights above would make for a nice photo.  And then proceeded to tell them to ‘sit still’ for the next 20 or so minutes…

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8
14mm
ISO 2500
f 3.2
15 seconds
WB Daylight

Photo: Myrland beach sunset, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway.  Sept 1, 2013.  20:24

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but Myrland has become one of my favorite beaches in the last couple years.  Perhaps I’ve just become over saturated by the other beaches (as nice as they are) or perhaps I like it because it is still a relatively seldom visited places and I will likely find the sand free of footprints, even on a sunny evening.

Normally I would have tried to pick a more mountainous location for a sunset such as this, but a few days before, I had sprained my ankle while hiking down from Ryten at Kvalvika beach.  So I wasn’t exactly in any position to be hiking up mountains.  And it was trouble enough just getting down to the beach.  Not to mention that I like to stand a little too close to the water, which on this day, meant I had to painfully hobble out of the way of incoming waves at just the last minute.

Perhaps I would have been a little more tolerant of pain were I not planning to begin a hike into Sweden’s Sarek national park just 10 days after this photo, so my ankle needed all the rest it could get.  Though I ended up dropping my camera in a lake just one day into that hike, so my autumn didn’t exactly go according to plan.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24mm f/3,5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 200
f 9.5
1.3 seconds
WB Daylight
2 images – top, bottom
B+W 6 stop neutral density filter

Photo: Northern Lights over Himmeltindan from Myrland, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway.  24 September, 2013.  22:54

After waiting two weeks for a new Nikon D800 camera to arrive, having dropped dropped it in a lake in Sweden, I lucked out at had a good display of Northern Lights on my first night back in action.  There had been some good displays in the previous weeks, but this was the best thus far, and I would have probably been quite grumpy had my camera arrived the following morning.

The main element I find missing while shooting the Northern Lights in autumn is snow.  There is just something a little less magical, but perhaps that’s just me.  It can also be a bit of a struggle sometimes to get yourself away from any coastal lights, as pretty much the whole population of Lofoten is on the coast.  And then, with the unpredictability of where the Northern Lights will actually appear in the sky (if they do at all), you often have to take a gamble on a composition that may or may not come into form.

This shot was my backup location.  I had originally intended to shoot from the beach at Myrland, giving me a nice clean view across to Vestvågøy, but the lights where too high in the sky to include both beach and Auroras in the image.  So I quickly hopped back in the car  and headed back down the road a way to a location where I had a slightly better overall composition.

I still think the empty sea is a little on the boring side, but at least the Aurora seems to be emerging from the summit of Himmeltindan, the highest mountain on Vestvågøy, so that kind of makes the image work for me.

Another think of note.  This image is from a night with a nearly full moon.  I often see the (incorrect) opinion floating around the internet that you need a moonless sky to see the Northern Lights.  This is simply not true.  And if fact, I think having some moonlight, to help illuminate the foreground, especially with winter snow, actually makes for a better image.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 800
f 5.6
30 sec
WB Daylight
2 images – top, bottom

Photo: Aurora and empty stockfish drying racks, near Storsandnes, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway.  September 24, 2013.  23:36

As the aurora that had filled the sky 30 minutes before finally began to lose strength and fade, I took towards looking for a different type of composition.  I will say it bluntly: I prefer northern lights set against a snow covered landscape.  Something about the dry mountains is autumn don’t just feel right to me.  But none the less, such an opportunity is not to be wasted.

I headed out to the coast near Myrland, on the east side of Flakstadøy so as to have as unobstructed view as possible across the sea (Nappstraumen) towards the northeast, where the aurora was the strongest on this particular night.  But after sometime shooting, I wasn’t totally happy with the night.  As I began the journey back to Stamsund, I passed by these stockfish drying racks, sitting empty in the autumn.

The moon was bright and the aurora losing strength so I was somewhat limited in what angles I could shoot.  I tried to find some interesting angles and something to help give a sense of ‘place’ to the image.  I’m not sure how well it works, but at least it is something slightly different.  Had there been a full covering on snow, and no lights in the background, I would probably be quite happy.  Maybe I’ll try and repeat the image in February.

Camera Info:
Nikon D800
Nikon 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift
24mm
ISO 2000
f 4.8
30 sec
WB Daylight
3 images – top, middle, bottom