The Quiet Picture

I was in a hurry to get some sleep last night so I will write down the full experience now. I’m new at aurora photography (and night photography in general) so I have to take some notes to learn.

But before I get to the nuts and bolts of the event, I just have to say this - it was awesome! It was just me, my camera, the northern lights and an owl howling in the neighbourhood. Well worth the sleep deprivation!

1. Composition

I used a hot shoe bubble level to level the camera and pointed it in the general direction of the northern lights. Take a picture, check the LCD and then adjust camera position, repeat process until the desired composition is reached. It worked out so well that I didn’t even need to crop the pictures in post-processing.

How in the world they did this with film I’ll never know!

I wasn’t spoiled with foreground options. We have forest everywhere (even if de-forestation is one my favourite complaints) so there aren’t many open views within a walking distance, especially those towards north and without light pollution. I was standing on a forest clearing with these lonely trees scattered around, so it was just a matter of picking out the most suitable tree to provide a silhouette against the lights. Considering how dark the pictures are, it’s safe to say that the aurora alone wouldn’t lift the photo. Even so, it’s a close call - there’s an awful lot of “dark matter” in the frame.

I’m also glad that the Sigma 15mm f2.8 fisheye is earning its keep now. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I found very little use for it last summer - I just can’t handle wideangles, fisheye or straight. But now with the auroras, I would have found myself in a spot of bother with the 24-105mm f4. Calling it a wideangle on the 1.6 crop factor sensor would be very generous!

2. Exposure

I had done my homework on what settings to use when photographing auroras. I didn’t have any help from the moon last night though, so my starting point of ISO 400 and 10 sec, lens wide open seemed a bit too dark and I lost some of the faint peripheral auroral light with that. I stepped up to ISO 500 and 15 sec, but when the aurora started moving (most of the time it just seemed to glow and not “dance” as you normally see in the northern light images), I went back down to 10 sec to catch the detail.

ISO 500, f2.8, 10 sec

Moonlight would really help, I hate the noise of ISO 500. Not that the noise was pretty at ISO 400 either. The digital noise is a bit too patterned as compared to film, making it twice as undesirable.

I checked fotosidan to see if other people have posted pictures from last night, and the aurora pictures in general. I was interested to see that they had used considerably longer exposures - in many cases over a minute. That helps to get the ISO down (and the lens can be stopped down as well), but the downside is that with longer exposures, you start getting star trails and that’s not good. The small trails can’t be seen in the web images, but they are most definitely there in the full size image. 15 sec will prevent trailing in the northern sky like in these images, so if I need more light, it will have to come from boosting the ISO rather than making longer exposures.

3. Focus

I started with the lens focused on infinity. I wasn’t sure what that would do with my foreground trees, so I tried with different focus settings - focus just shy of the infinity mark, on the mark, and little beyond. The 40D preview picture isn’t very sharp because it uses the low res JPG, but it is possible to compare different pictures so I used these different focus settings in consecutive frames and then compared them to one another, and was able to determine that the focus setting just shy of the infinity mark was best. When I got the pictures on the computer, I was happy to see that it had indeed been the correct decision!

4. Light

Being a night photography newbie, I keep discovering new things every time I try. For example, these long exposures can catch light that my eye doesn’t see.

I don’t know if it’s some digital idiosyncrasy or if the auroral light really was like that, but my eye was only seeing varying strengths of green, while the picture shows some other hues.

ISO 500, f2.8, 15 sec

The sensor also caught some light pollution in the north (left of the birch in the above image), although I wasn’t able to see it. I reckon it must be Kårböle. To ENE, there was a visible glow of light (lower right edge in the image), maybe Ramsjö or even Ånge (100 km as the crow flies). And now that I’ve been staring the full res images, I can see that there is actually just the faintest of orange glows across almost the whole horizon below the green lights, and I’ve no idea where it comes from.

Now I’m just waiting for the next opportunity to see and shoot the auroras before the season is over!

This is peak time of the year for auroral activity. It was a clear night and the aurora forecast confirmed the high activity, so I packed the camera and set out to the closest spot with an open view towards north. I finally got some half decent pictures of the northern lights! I tried it last year, but the results were poor at best.

Sigma 15mm f2.8 @ f2.8, ISO 500 @ 10 sec (cloned out a radio mast light)

The bright star on the right is Vega, with Cygnus in full view between Vega and the birch.

I was out for a couple of hours, gave up when the light seemed to be fading and my fingers and toes were starting to freeze. I was home just before 11pm. As a sign of my lack of dedication to my hobby - this is as late as I ever have been on a photographic outing. Usually I’m in bed by this time… speaking of which, it’s definitely time. Gotta work tomorrow!

That’s the kind of a day it was.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I gave up on wildlife photography early on in my photography career. Most of the animal photography I’ve done since then is in zoos - not counting the occasional squirrel, of course! When I lived in Ljusdal, I used to visit Järvzoo quite often. Since I moved to Loos, the visits have been few and far in between. In fact, today was only my second visit in over 3 years.

The day’s favourite species - wolverine (cropped from right to 4:5)

One of the highlights of any Järvzoo visit is the wolves. Usually when I visit Järvzoo, I make sure to get to the wolves well before the feeding time. There’s a lot of activity going on while they wait for the grub, but now I found the whole thing oddly unsatisfying. There’s a whole new pack of wolves, but I recognised the behaviour patterns immediately. And why not… it’s just typical wolf behaviour. Typical wolf behaviour, for captive wolves. I must admit that I felt sorry for them. They are magnificent animals, they should be running free and not kept in a cage. But that’s the whole zoo debate. Should we or should we not cage wild animals?

I’ve always felt that we should have zoos. They serve two purposes - first and foremost, conservation. And secondly, it’s the only chance most people ever have to see these wild species. And the second point actually also counts towards conservation. People need to be educated. Trying to protect these same animals completely in the wild is just simply not realistic. Take the wolf for example. We have resident wolves in this area, and there’s a constant debate whether or not we should have them. People take any excuse to shoot them legally, and if they don’t get a permit, then they shoot them illegally. Only thing that helps is that a new generation grows up, with appreciation for the wild and the will to co-exist. A visit to the zoo, and a chance to see the wolves close-up, goes a long way to convince the kids that wolves are not the beasts their parents claim they are.

The way the world is today, zoos are needed. They are the Noah’s Ark. And despite it - or maybe it’s actually just because of it? - a wild animal in a cage is just wrong.

End of rant, and back to my visit. While I was standing in front of the wolf enclosure, I got a bit disheartened. I already had a bunch of pictures, and zero inspiration to get any more. On my way back, this lynx caught my attention though. It seemed so content to lie there up on the cliff, in the sun, lazily watching the people passing by. I’ve seen my share of stress behaviour in captive animals (shame on the zoos!), but this was one cool cat that seemed quite content with the circumstances. It lifted my spirits, but I can’t help but feel that this was my last visit to Järvzoo - or any zoo, for that matter. My head says yes, and my heart says no.

I think I will stick to the squirrels now.

I had a near miss with the squirrels today. (Whether it’s a relief or a disappointment, depends on how fed up of squirrels you are…) But I think the work is now starting to pay off; the images are definitely getting better. While I’m learning squirrel behaviour, the squirrels are learning a few tricks of their own. Jackie demonstrated the reason why I’ve lately found a lot of the seed cups tilted - she sits right on it!

So now you also know my setup. The green wires to hold the cup under the perch - and at this point I can also confess that this particular perch (the branch above the squirrel, not below…) is actually a fake. Not sure if you can tell it if you don’t know?

Anyway, I waited for two hours for the first squirrel to make its appearance. I was just going to give up and go out when they turned up, so I spent the rest of the morning shooting squirrels.

Another thing I thought I had given up on is skiing. I’ve been procrastinating again so I haven’t found a solution to my ski boot problem, but at least my pain tolerance should be high by now so I decided to do a trip - the new powder snow that had fallen overnight was just way too inviting to resist.

(Yes, I did get blisters again. Now I’m definitely done with skiing for this winter.)

The snowmobilers have also been out in force. They leave no doubts about that - the tracks are everywhere. I could hardly believe my eyes when I found a patch of untouched snow. I guess there are two ways to appreciate the pristine snow cover: you can admire nature’s beauty, or you can leave your mark on it.

Jackie was in a playful mood and kept changing her position and pose constantly. It made for a good variation in the pictures, but it was a struggle to keep up sometimes and I had to make some compositional sacrifices to nail the focus. For example, this picture was composed with the eye dead in the middle, so I had to resort to cropping to fix the composition.

I’ll be posting some squirrel images I took yesterday. I’m still trying to figure out if they’re any better than any other squirrels pictures I’ve taken so far. A bit sharper anyway, because there’s enough light to manage low ISOs and/or fast shutters.

Blackie was the first guest to arrive

I’ve been complaining about how the squirrels eat the bird food, but now I got yet another thief to reckon with - the deer have discovered the squirrel food! I’ve never caught them in the act, but there’s no question about it. The hoof prints around the perches reveal them, and the deer also lick the food cups clean while the squirrels always leave seed shells behind them. So the squirrels gobble up the bird food, and the deer gobble up the squirrel food. I’m wondering if I should put up a deer feeding station next winter. Maybe I’ll get moose to eat their food…

But the squirrels do get their share anyway, and today was just about the best squirrel photography day I’ve ever had. The sun was shining from behind a thin cloud cover, casting a light that was not strictly sunshine but it was definitely not overcast either. To top it off, that thin cloud cover produced a light snowfall so I got some snowflakes to decorate the pictures. I’m gonna have to get back to these pictures in a few days… sometimes it’s hard to have an opinion right after the shoot. But I still have a feeling that these are among the best squirrel pictures I’ve taken so far!

Slight crop from left and bottom

I feel a bit torn. While I think that the new snow we got this week looks really beautiful, it’s also only just more snow that has to melt off before spring. But, no matter how much there is of it, the warm sun makes quick work of it. While I was taking this picture, I heard the water dripping off in the forest behind me. It was an overcast day but the sun came out a few times… and every time it did, the snow was falling from the trees right before my eyes. Spring is already here.

After shooting spring crocuses by the roadside in Färila last spring, I decided to plant some of my own so I’d have easy access to the first flowers of the year. Said and done, in September I planted some crocus and snowdrop bulbs, hoping that my first ever effort at gardening would produce some results. Whatever I had expected, I can say for sure that it wasn’t this - they have already started to grow!

This is right under my kitchen window. The place gets a lot of sun and little snow, so the part closest to the house is already free of snow. Some plants obviously can’t wait but shoot right through!

I wish I remembered what I planted and where, so I’m not 100% sure which leaves are crocuses and which are snowdrops. Snowdrops are known to push through snow, but these leaves are very crocus-like… I hope I get some snowdrops anyway, because I have never seen one before!