Photo: Return of the northern lights season, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. August 27, 2018. 23:49

The northern lights are back over Lofoten! This image is actually from my second sighting, but conditions were a bit better this night. The previous night they were visible as well, but the sky was fairly cloudy and the aurora weren’t in the most photogenic location from the beach.

The sky is still not fully dark, but a solar storm brought high aurora activity over the north. Luckily, this coincided with a rare clear night in the last month, so more or less perfect timing for the first couple nights of aurora for the 2018/2019 aurora season. With the sky still relatively light, the aurora was faint, but still visible to the eye and still moving quite a bit. Had this show occurred only a few weeks later, then it would have been a fantastic night! But there are still 7 months ahead of northern lights here in the north, so I’m sure I’ll grow spoiled by April. For now though, It’s nice to see a return of the green dancing sky in this transition between summer and autumn.

I often get questions and sometimes read the false statement that northern lights are only a winter phenomenon. They are not! In reality, the aurora occur all year long. But during summer, it’s just not dark enough to see them. Only during these last days of August does the sky finally grow dark enough for the northern lights to overpower the summer twilight. But for the next weeks still, only strong aurora will be visible, as the northern horizon still glows throughout the night. Soon though, the night will be dark, and all aurora will be visible.

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Sigma 14mm f/1.8
14mm
ISO 400
f 2
2.5 seconds
WB Daylight

Photo: Summer fog flows from the north over the mountains of Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. July 12, 2018. 23:35

When the summer wind blows out of the north, the outer side of Lofoten can become concealed in a blanket of fog approaching from the sea. And what might look like a dreary day down below can become almost a dreamlike world up high, above the fog.

The other week we had a few days of fog covering the northern side of the islands – Typically the southern, Vestfjord side, of Lofoten remains fog free and sunny. I decided to head up one of the local mountains near my house to get some sunlight and see what might happen.

Initially the fog was quite low and remind on the north, left, side of the mountains. But as the hours passed, it grew thicker and flowed further inland, until almost all of Vestvågøy was hidden, only the peaks above 500 meters rising into the sunlight. At my location at about 700 meters, I was safe.

With the fog flowing over the mountain pass below me, I knew I wanted to capture something more than a static shot – which looked a little boring, actually. So I used a 10 stop ND filter for an exposure of 30 seconds. I could have gone longer as well, but my phone had died, and I didn’t feel like counting. But 30 seconds was enough to both capture the movement of the fog and to soften it, creating a better separation with the mountains.

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
27mm
ISO 125
f 10
30 seconds
WB Daylight
10 stop B+W neutral density filter