Auroras vs Shorts

[ Current Mood - August 2024 ]

This year has seen some once in a lifetime moments for aurora chasing in the southern hemisphere, and not just on the most southern tips of Tasmania and New Zealand. Last night was a Level 7 storm and back in May we got a Level 8.

Living so far away from the poles here in Melbourne, it has to be a super big event to get a look in for us. Location is everything for auroras. On the evening of May 3 earlier this year Shellie and I were running a food photography workshop in country Victoria, just a few hours drive North-West of Melbourne. We do our best to make these workshops memorable, but stepping outside in our shorts to capture an aurora event is something we are unlikely to repeat every year!

I didn’t have any of my usual aurora gear with me. I happened to have my little 20mm F2 sigma wide angle, which I love for street photography, and a tripod that moment before was being used for capturing a time-lapse of Shellie styling cinnamon scrolls. I was literally standing in my shorts, in the Aussie bush, shooting auroras. The shots I got were nice, but obviously nothing as dramatic as what we see in the Arctic. The important thing however, is that our companions for the workshop got to enjoy it and take part in a global moment that may not come around for another few decades.

Last night was another burst of aurora activity. Not as strong, and not as well timed. Thanks to the power of the internet it feels like we can just step outside and see them for ourselves. We see some nice shades of red or purple on our social media, and expect to see that in our own night sky. But the human eye sees things a little differently to the camera, and not everyone is cranking the saturation dials to the same extent when editing. Results do vary.

The biggest problem is simply where you live. If you’re an inner city apartment surrounded by street lights and police sirens, the chances of capturing a moment on film that matches the romance in your mind is pretty slim. And the further you live from the wild waves of the Southern Ocean, the less intense you can expect even a Level 6 aurora event to perform.

Where you live matters.

I make no secret of the fact that if the Norwegians would let me, I would buy a small cabin near Tromsø and live the rest of my days eating cod and reindeer while waiting for the sky to dance. During the day the scenery of Arctic Norway is majestic. Winter light makes it an order of magnitude more special again, as the sun sits low over the horizon, or peaks out between snow clouds. Either option offers sufficient drama and beauty for my camera.

There are days when a warm bubble of air moves up from Europe and gets trapped inside the Arctic. Heat bubbles not only raise the temperature and threaten the blanket of snow, but they make the air moist and that means clouds. Clouds are the ultimate enemy of the aurora chaser.

You always hear about friends who flew all the way to Tromsø for just one night, and saw a great aurora and then went home to share the photos. What you don’t hear are the thousands and thousands of people who flew all the way to Tromsø for a whole week and never saw a thing because clouds stole the sky every night. People don’t like to share those stories nearly as much.

But it happens. When we stared running Arctic workshops over a decade ago the rough expectation was 3 nights of good photos across a 14 day trip. Some years we’ve had 13 nights of shoots instead of 3. Some evenings we get clear skies all night, but no aurora. Man that hurts. Sometimes we plan a special location to spend the night and Shellie bakes a cake and we sit around watching the aurora with our time-lapses rolling with a hot chocolate in hand.

The Arctic in winter is a mixed bag.

We choose Tromsø for our aurora trips because it’s located right on the arc of the aurora circle. Even a modest aurora event produces a magnificent show in Tromsø, because it’s right above your head. And those bigger nights, when you can see auroras in Paris or Scotland, they bounce and jiggle from places south and back up the poles, so we get to enjoy them as well while revelling in the different colours.

This coming winter is aligning with a solar maximum, meaning coronal ejections from the sun will be more active compared to any other year before or after. And I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be for that, than the far north of Norway. We still have a couple of places left for January 2025 in Tromsø. It’s an easy airport to fly to, and simply my favourite scenery in all of the Arctic. We have our quiet locations planned out, a private chef for the duration, and a local guide to ensure we get where ever we need to go.

If you enjoyed the taste of aurora down south this winter, come join us to chase the big ones up in Tromsø. Just don’t expect to be wearing your shorts when we’re shooting auroras up there!

– Ewen

Join us in Norway for January 2025. Book NOW :)
https://ewenbell.com/itinerary-polar.php

Learn more about why we see the auroras so differently with our eyes compared to our cameras:
https://ewenbell.com/blog/Why_Auroras_Look_Different_on_The_Camera