2024's Northern Lights Escapades

Recounts and results from a couple of night-time adventures to see the northern lights and catch them on film.

I’ve never been particularly enthralled with the idea of taking shots of the night sky. Natural subjects in general have never been a strong suit nor a strong interest of mine, but the solar activity this year provided ample excuse to embark on a journey to try to catch some of the geomagnetic storm’s effects on film. I went out twice this year with this goal in mind, first in May and then again five months later in October.

May 10th, 2024

May this year was a particularly active month for the aurora borealis, but the 10th had the strongest showing of the month with the NOAA Aurora Dashboard citing G4 geomagnetic storm conditions being observed that night.

I didn't manage to get far enough north to see the aurora fully in the highest likelihood zone, but I did manage to travel enough distance to see some of it.

I hadn’t originally been planning to go out that night, but I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to potentially see the northern lights with my naked eye. I packed up what equipment I had on hand at this point (which, thankfully, included a tripod along with some Portra 800 which would prove quite useful) and set out north.

I don’t recall the exact stops I made on the fifty-mile journey north, but I do remember the significant increase in traffic among the more rural roads and highways that weren’t particularly meant to handle the volume of cars on similar missions as I was causing me to pull over at a small park and setting up my equipment.

This shot is from the first location I visited in May; I'm unsure what purpose the speaker on the pole serves or if I even was able to see it in the dark, but I like the way its sharp angles contrast against the haze of the aurora.

The aurora wasn’t particularly visible without the aid of a camera at this point, but if one looked directly upwards it was somewhat visible. Unfortunately, my tripod does not have the capability to angle my camera in such a manner (as it would fall over) so my shots were limited to the horizon.

After a few minutes surveying the surrounding sky, I packed my equipment up and headed further north to a more secluded residential area off the main state highway I was traversing with a small park.

The streaks of light in the sky weren't very visible to the naked eye, but the camera was able to capture them quite well in this suburban residential neighborhood.

I believe this is where I saw a bit more of the aurora, but it was still not easy to discern with the naked eye. I did manage to inadvertently capture a plane flying overhead in one of my shots however!

I don't remember if I intended for the plane to be caught in the shot (I don't think I did due to the odd composition) but I think it adds to the shot.

After a bit of time spent around that area, I finally called it quits and headed back home. I remember getting back well after midnight and being quite tired, but I was somewhat pleased with the scans I got back. I ended up tinkering with one of them a bit in post, which is not something I typically find myself doing to a great extent.

While the original scan of this shot had a fair amount of color, I decided to tweak the exposure and black level a bit to make the colors pop a bit more. The grain is a lot more pronounced as a result but I believe the tradeoff is worth it.

Overall, the experience was alright, but it wasn’t anything particularly memorable. I let the subject out of my periphery for a while until I caught wind of yet more solar activity in October.

October 10th, 2024

I decided to drive west instead of north this time around in order to focus on minimizing potential light pollution from the surrounding metro area. I also drove over double the distance out, ending up somewhere around 100 miles from where I began for my selected spot in a direction mostly westbound but also a slight bit south.

The forecast for October 10th was nearly identical to the prior one for May 10th, but I managed to handle it a bit better this time around.

The southbound route might seem counterintuitive, but I was aiming to get as far away from light pollution as possible and that area was the most likely to be free from it. My drive was rather sparsely populated with other cars, a nice contrast from the previous trip. I ended up stopping at a small park yet again in what felt like was the middle of nowhere after driving through acres of farmland on unpaved roads.

Unfortunately for me, my camera was loaded with a partially used roll of the new Fuji 400 stock that I had picked up at CVS on the cheap. It does what I need it to in typical conditions, but it wasn’t particularly well-suited for the extremely low-light conditions I was working with at this moment. This resulted in most of the shots I took being unusable with only a few coming out visible whatsoever through their large amounts of grain.

The park I stopped at featured a little pavilion-type structure that I explored for a bit before setting up my equipment. The indoor bits of it were locked up, but the outdoor lighting provided a nice contrast from the dimly lit sky.

Once I got there, explored, set up my equipment, and took a couple shots, I lamented the fact that the sky seemed as dull as it had been five months prior. However, as the night went on, brush strokes of red and green began to sweep across my vision in a way that I had never seen before.

The gorgeous reds clashing with the greens were stunning to view in person. This shot doesn't particularly do the breathtaking experience of standing next to the dirt lot gazing upon the lights in the sky justice, but it does capture the basis of it.

Sitting there in the grass next to the dirt lot trying to lean my tripod enough to get shots of the sky, I was taken aback by the moment somewhat. I was quite the distance from anything familiar in the dead of the night, and yet I felt completely at peace with myself and my surroundings. It was a moment of clarity that I hadn’t felt in quite some time.

Once the aurora faded enough to the point where I no longer felt its graces, I quickly scrambled a more northern location and drove the handful of miles out to it. I still couldn’t see it upon arrival, so I ended up taking some sloppy compositions of the surrounding area before heading back home.

With no filter to counter-act the glare from the light source accidentally left in frame and the lack of sharpness resulting from an exposure time far too long to be shooting handheld, this shot is a bit of a mess and reflects how tired I was at this point in the night.

The drive back was a slog, but I was content with the experience. It felt much grander than the one in May, and I was glad to have been able to bear witness to the natural phenomenon with the naked eye. I doubt that I’ll be able to do such again for quite some time, but I’m glad that I was able to do so at least once.