It is always a nice surprise when you receive an unexpected email from someone that takes you totally off guard and it is more than welcome and it also brings memories flooding back.
I received the photo on the left from Peter here in the UK who had been in contact with Bjørn Jørgensen who I mentioned in an earlier blog post. The photo was taken last February and the two people in the image are my partner Sue and I. I instantly recognised us and knew who had captured the image and it just brought back some great memories of our holiday in Norway and the auroras.
I met Bjørn last February over looking Ersfjordbotn and spent a really enjoyable evening capturing the auroras and chatting in general with him. He is a very engaging photographer and extremely friendly. Hopefully when we return to Ersfjordbotn in February we will get the chance to meet up him again.
Bjørn has an extensive library of amazing aurora images. He is lucky enough to live close to Ersfjordbotn and his portfolio really does stand out due to their quality and I can highly recommend you spend sometime having a look at his website www.arcticphoto.no . I have also included an image he emailed to me below. When you see corona's and the auroras like this you know why people go to Norway and often like us go back after 1 taste.
I would just like to thank Bjørn again for allowing me to use his images.
We are now less than a month away from going back to Ersfjordbotn and I am so looking forward to returning. I believe the weather hasn't been the best this aurora season so far, but as we have hired a 4x4 car this time hopefully we will get the chance to explore more and find the clear skies that are a must to see the lights dancing for you.
Since my last blog a couple of solar storms and also sun spots have been active and so maybe we haven't passed solar maximum just yet and maybe 2013 will be the year. The 2 sun spots AR1652 and AR1654 are very large and so here's hoping they still contain enough energy to be active when we are there and so I will be keeping a very close eye on these in the days to come. I read on the Space Weather website someone mentioning the sun looks like a very spotty teenager at the moment due to all the sun spots and so if it continues like this then the outlook for our trip is very good. After a quiet few months maybe the solar activity is picking up.
I looked up the date when we were watching the auroras with Bjørn and it was early March last year, when I then went back to archives on the Space Weather website I was surprised/shocked to see the planetary K-index (KP index) was rated as just KP1 (quiet) and yet there were times we just stood there in awe at the wonderful sight of the displays in the sky.
That night made up our minds to return so maybe it just goes to illustrate that you read as much information on as relevant websites as you like, but just because you think it won't be a good evening from what you have determined from all the sources of information and data, it can though count for very little. The only true way to determine this is to find that clear sky and to get out and look for yourself.
This weekend I will be having a little play around with time lapse photography in preparation of hopefully being able to put together a video clip of the auroras when we are there. This is something very new to me and I haven't tried it before, but hopefully with more than a little trial and error I will have something I am happy with first and foremost myself that I will then share with the readers of my blog.
On that subject I would just like to thank everyone for taking the time out to read my blog and I hope you have find some of my posts useful, appealing and it inspires you to visit a country where you can see the auroras. If you have a travel related bucket list and seeing the auroras borealis is on it, then just go. But, go for as long as you can afford it. If you expect to turn up and mother nature to just switch on the Northern Lights as you are only there for a couple of days, you could go home bitterly disappointed.
So the Christmas tree is up and our 1 year old cat has decided to take up residence in the tree yet again. He did exactly the same last year as well when he was literally a kitten only a few weeks old. I am praying he grows out of this as he gets older before his causes untold damage either to the tree, house but more importantly himself as he loves to chew the cables for the led lights.
I have been posting over the weekend on the Tromso forum on Tripadvisor and there are some really interesting threads there about the impact of moonlight and the auroras when taking photographs. I, like a number of other photographers who have posted, don't/didn't find bright moonlight an issue and believe that this only serves to enhance the image. I can appreciate if the auroras are weak then bright moonlight will only serve to over power and weaken there impact. Tromso though is so far inside the arctic circle that any auroras seem to be strong enough to overcome this. Either that or as a photographer you learn to adapt and to be mobile and that is most definitely a huge advantage.
One thing we learnt this year is that whilst it maybe cloudy and horrible in one place you can literally drive around the side of fjord to another place just 10 minutes away and you will be treated to clear skies. Hence I would definitely recommend hiring a car if you go. One word of warning to UK drivers, you are literally driving on snow or perma ice or sometimes slush depending on the weather which is something we really don't experience here at home. That's fine, until you remember that the excess on your car hire for any damage to the vehicle including the underneath of it will cost you the princely sum of £1000! This year we will be taking out car hire excess insurance before we go which is around £40-£60 per annum and covers this cost. We will also be hiring a 4x4 as well as two wheel drive isn't really suitable even with snow tyres on the car.
One evening when we were photographing the auroras on the hill just overlooking Ersfjordbotn I had the enjoyable company of talking to a professional photographer called Bjørn Jørgensen who was also there. Bjørn is a very friendly and knowledgeable photographer and a real wealth of useful information as he lives very close by and makes a living from selling his images of the auroras. He has his own website that can be found here http://www.arcticphoto.no I Googled him this weekend in preparation of returning to Ersfjordbotn and was pleased to see he has a new DVD out. I am not sure what it is like, but I would expect that it would certainly be worth the investment for anyone interested.
One slightly disappointing fact I also found out this weekend is that the Rica hotel in Tromso is offering evening trips to Ersfjordbotn this season to see the auroras so maybe it wont be as peaceful and quiet as February 2012. Just to give you an idea of costs though the charge for the trip taking into account Ersfjordbotn is only 19km from Tromso is around £100 per person! I am just glad we are based there and so can make the most of the location and if the weather dictates we go elsewhere then so be it. Mother Nature makes up her own mind and we just have to follow her lead, but then that is half the fun of chasing the light as if we saw the auroras every night I am sure we would just tend to take them for granted rather than standing in awe at what we see.
So I have finished tonight with an image captured in February of the auroras and bright moonlight to me this isn't an issue, others may disagree, but as photographers know it is all subjective as to whether you think moonlight spoils the image or not. I know me feelings and that of others, each to their own though.
