Northern Lights
The first time I ever managed to photograph this natural phenomenon.
Yesterday night was amazing. Because of some huge solar activity and clear skies, aurora borealis, commonly known as northern lights, was visible in the Netherlands.
Yesterday night I was busy trying to attract night moths with a white sheet and a lamp. The results were somewhat disappointing. When cleaning up my neighbor told me that northern light was visible, which is extremely rare in the Netherlands. I had not really looked up to the sky at that point. Now, you do not see images like the ones above with the naked eye. Your eyes adapt to the little light that is available and, hence, you do not see much of the colors, but you do see the light stripes in the sky.
The camera though does see the colors exactly the way they are. My iPhone was particularly good at this. (It might actually have enhanced the colors somewhat. You never know what the software in the mobile phones does with your pictures.) So the shots in this article were produced with my mobile phone. They were exposed for three seconds, handheld. The software in the phone manages to remove all the motion from the images. Trying to achieve the same result with my Canon R7 was really difficult and in the end, the iPhone images were better.
I did apply some minor postprocessing. In particular, I applied noise reduction, using the new ON1 NoNoise AI. That worked amazingly well. I had already heard that the new version was especially good for night skies, and indeed it was.
This was probably a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I am happy I was awake to see and photograph it. But tonight there might actually be a second chance.
Mark Overmars is a dedicated insect photographer who loves to share and regularly publishes his work. You can visit his website at www.insectphotography.org. Download his free insect photography book at www.insectphotography.org/book.
