I’ve just spent the last two months in Arctic Norway and let me tell you things up are can be very very hard indeed. When we first arrived it was early January, with a serious shortage of daylight and an excess of snow. I like this time of year in Norway because it’s the coldest part of winter, which means you get better odds on clear skies and hence better chances for the Northern Lights.
Auroras remain for me one of the most remarkable and treasured experiences of my life. They are poorly understood by most people, full of mystery and challenge even for science, and remain a challenge to chase for photographers. And that’s exactly what makes them so special.
Everything about auroras is unpredictable and uncertain. From the weather, to the space weather, to where on the globe you are, to a patch of low cloud that rolls over the hill, to car lights on high beam somewhere across the fjord, or standing in the cold and loosing the sensation of your toes, or deciding to "wait and see" before heading out... only to miss the big wave.
Chasing auroras is so very very hard. Just planning a trip to the Arctic and trying to workout a game plan can be hard, such as which city to spend your nights, or who’s running a workshop who actually knows ANYTHING about auroras and how to chase them. Everything about auroras is difficult and always demands an element of luck. Such as landing in Tromsø on just the right week because last week it was raining all day and clouded all night. Lucky to have a quiet place without three other buses of people walking about with head-torches. Lucky to pick the right tour that runs for two weeks instead of 5 days.
The best luck is when the auroras arrive early, just after dinner, and keep dancing through the evening while you have clear skies. And you can stand out there under the sky and fill your cards with magic. Or just keep trying new things with the camera. But make sure to recheck your focus on the lens, because half the time you can’t really see what you’re doing in the dark anyway.
When the auroras arrive they make me feel lucky. I know that where ever I am standing to watch them over my head, there’s a huge chunk of the Arctic that won’t be seeing that same view. Maybe there’s cloud cover blocking the view across Finland, or the KP level was too low for folks in Sweden to get more than a soft glow on the horizon.
The past few years have introduced another variable for aurora chasing: Climate Change. My favourite time to be here used to be February, because the nights are dark and the days are long enough to chase some scenery. Some days are full of snow instead of photos, and that’s OK. We sit out the blizzards and make the most of clear skies when they’ve passed. But climate change is making February a lot harder now, because the weather is warmer. Instead of being a sub-zero landscape full of snow The Arctic is facing increasingly more frequent warm spells that deliver clouds and rain instead.
Rain is not fun for my style of photography, and clouds are a pain in the neck for aurora chasing. We design our Aurora Photography Tour with the benefit of a local guide who will literally drive for 6 hours into the night in order to ensure we find a patch of clear skies. He jokes that he doesn’t auroras, he chases the sky. Every time we did a long chase this year we managed to find at least a little bit of clear sky, and a little bit of aurora. On several occasions we got a lot of both.
But it’s hard work. We pack out dinner to warm up over the camp fire, and fill up the bus with tripods and sleepy photographers. It’s exciting heading off into the unknown on a chase, unsure exactly what we’ll see or when we’ll see it. Hard work like this is often rewarding though, and when we arrive in time for a big show of dancing auroras on the beach, or in a forest, or up a mountain ridge, we feel like we’ve earned the shot.
Auroras don’t come easy. They make you work for it, pushing your camera and clothing to the limits. And often your patience as well. But they are worth the wait. You forget all about the cold while standing back to watch them burst across the sky. If they were easy to photograph they wouldn’t be special. In a world that being taken over by AI generated slop, the hard physical demands of travelling across the globe and waiting out for a little luck in the far north of Norway is something a little bit quirky and very very satisfying.
I know in time the science behind predicting aurora events will get better. That will be a little bad too. Not knowing when or how they will show up on any given night is part of the mystery. Part of the magic. For now there’s no danger in that mystery being solved any time soon. We know so much about our planet and yet so little about forecasting auroras. For now, they remain one of the hard things.
But I’ll be back here again next year, ready to do more of the hard things in The Arctic. And loving it.
– Ewen
What to Pack for Aurora Chasing
https://youtu.be/1tLZ6XAlNFY
Preview of the 2026 Aurora Chase Workshop
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