This past weekend I went out with talented American photographer, Greg Constantakis, and his fiancee, on an “aurora hunt”.  While most northerners are flocking south to places like Florida, Greg – a Floridian – came to the conclusion that there’s no place he would rather be than up in Canada’s north, braving the snow and ice in the hopes of photographing one of our greatest gifts, the Aurora Borealis.

Now, I’m going to come out and say it, at the risk of the wrath of NWT Tourism officials:  the aurora this year has, well, sucked.  We had some beautiful shows back in September/October, but this has been one of the quietest November, December, and January shooting seasons I can remember since I’ve been here.  There’s been a few good nights, of course, but not the “every night” intensity that we seem to get some years.  Which is problematic when you have southerners like Greg coming up and you want to show them a good time.

Which means, of course, not worrying about it…and playing.  And who doesn’t like to play?

Last night was unseasonably warm, due to a low cloud ceiling, which meant two things:  first, we were able to bounce around the Yellowknife night for a couple of hours with the temperature no more than an afterthought, and second, it allowed us to get some shots of something I’ve never seen before.  As we were driving out Highway 3 outside Yellowknife and pulled over at the side of the road to shoot an abandoned barn, we happened something dark in the sky.  A cross, of all things – it’s shadow evident on the low clouds above -  created by a strong spotlight.  What make it cooler yet was that there was a hint of red/green aurora in behind the clouds, which were thin enough to make their presence known, but thick enough to serve as the backdrop to the cross.  Pretty cool stuff.

From there, it was a night of “painting with light” (long exposures using non-ambient light sources), and some ice road fun.  Good times, and I think Greg and his fiancee had a great night despite the cloud cover which kept any potential aurora at bay.

Tags: Aurora Borealis, borealis, canada, cross, Dave Brosha, holy, images, instruction, night, nightscape, Northern Lights, workshop, Yellowknife

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.