I could feel the rhythm of my heart intensify to allegro as I fired a test shot from the end of my long woodland driveway. A quick glance at my camera’s LCD screen revealed tints of green and red toward the horizon. Yes, an aurora! “Seneca Lake, here I come!”
After about fifteen minutes, I arrived at my destination. I exited my trusty steed and took a deep breath. The stars gleamed like diamonds. Yet the late-night heavens didn’t seem at all lonely to me. Rather, they were warm and inviting, filled with myriads of luminaries displaying the power and wisdom of our magnificent, creative, Creator.
I took a few moments to peruse the galaxies, then give my attention to the northern sky and the aurora I was seeking.
I was familiar with the area. My plan was to first walk down the lakeshore to get some shots of the aurora above the rocky shoreline. Eventually I would walk up the dam’s hill to capture the aurora above Route 574.
I set up my tripod near the rocks at the lake’s edge and began panning the sky from northeast to northwest, attempting to discover where the aurora had awakened. It was now nearing eleven o’ clock, and I found there to be a playful member of the aurora family dressed in muted red chasing the northern tail of the Milky Way.
“The Milky Way would look great in my aurora shot,” I said to myself. I exchanged my 28mm lens for my super-wide Rokinon 14mm because the aurora and Milky Way were big, and I didn’t want my photos to look crowded.
Whenever I photograph a nightscape, I almost always capture the earth and sky in two separate parts. And sometimes I shoot them with different lenses. This allows me to shoot the earth at a much longer shutter speed and lower ISO, which creates a higher-quality foreground and smoother water with more reflections, plus much less noise. This method is also beneficial because it allows me to concentrate fully on the sky—get that shot—then concentrate fully on the earth.
For the next two hours the aurora didn’t become bright and structured. But I learned from the aurora which I captured back in August that sometimes it takes a while for sleeping giants to awake, so I spent my time practicing compositions while panning from northeast to northwest so I could continually remain apprised of the big picture. For most of my adventure, I could not actually see the aurora. However, my camera continually recorded a slight bit of color.
Just before one o’ clock something wonderful happened! I began seeing faint ribbons of red without the camera aid. I recomposed the scene in my camera and fired a shot, then looked at the LCD screen. “Wow!” I said out loud. “It’s beginning to happen!”
Parts of the sky had dramatically transformed from muted colors to vivid reds and fluorescent greens! I captured what would be my favorite lake shot of the night—ribbons of red building at the right of the frame and angling inward, while a muted red shaft played tag with the Milky Way.
After a while, when I felt satisfied with what I had accomplished at the lakeshore, I hurried up the hill and began capturing shots of the aurora above the road. By that time the vibrant red area had spread and intensified even further. I continued to shoot until the color began to wane at about two o’ clock. I ended up capturing the road itself with a 28mm lens at a two-minute, twenty-four-second shutter speed, which rendered nice exposure to the very dark road. I captured my aurora shots at 14mm, F/2.8, ISO 5000, at ten seconds.
Persistence paid off big. I could have given up after it seemed the aurora had quit for the night. However, knowing auroras often flare up in the early morning hours and staying that extra stretch really made a delightful difference tonight.
