Sunset Auroras

Sunset Auroras

Yesterday I was pleased to see it was still light when I left work at 16:15 – the days are getting long šŸ™‚ I went to buy food, and arrived home at about 17:00. Getting out of the car, I looked up at the sky and to my surprise, the aurora was out even though the sky was still very light! I quickly grabbed my camera and our brand new fisheye lens (Samyang 8mm f/3.5). It’s a tricky lens: manual focus and manual aperture setting. I drove to Telegrafbukta where I found a gale blowing the snow around. I didn’t dress very well so I was soon freezing, and the wind was so strong it made my (very sturdy) tripod move. Not the best conditions to try out this new lens, but I had no choice as Paul took my other wide-angle lens to Austria :D.

Anyway, despite all this, I am quite happy with the results. It’s fun to be able to capture the aurora right overhead. The fisheye lens gives extremely distorted images, I might try to play with some software that can correct this, but I haven’t had time yet.

Double (almost triple) arch of aurora stretching over the sky at sunset At some point the arch started rippling, very impressive!

Here you can clearly see how light the sky on the horizon still was Not even my fisheye lens was wide enough to capture the whole arch!

It was so impressive to see the aurora dancing overhead while it was still light. I didn’t last very long, after 30 minutes I was fed up with the wind and the cold, and I went home. Not long after, clouds rolled in and ended the show.

Langnes

Langnes

I got a set of graduated neutral density filters as a Christmas present, and have been waiting for a chance to try them out. These filters can be used to take photos in situations where (for example) the foreground is dark, while the sky is much brighter. Without a filter, this usually results in either an overexposed sky or a underexposed foreground. Today just after sunset, we drove to Langnes, the area near the airport. It was fun to play with the filters!

Looking towards Ersfjorden, the sea in the foreground is blurred because of the long exposure Seaweed tossed around in the waves

With the filters, you can take much longer exposures than you normally can, which is quite fun at the coast – you can blur out the movement of the water.

A panorama of the sunset sky

Of course I also had to get some photos of my favourite cabin šŸ™‚ I did use the filter here, but the sky was still too bright relative to the foreground. Another trick you can use then, is to take several images with different exposures and combine them into one image later. For the images below, I used 4 exposures to get one image.

Old red cabin against the sunset I can't get enough of this very photogenic cabin :) this photo also shows how little snow we have....

As you can see, there’s hardly any snow left! But I’m not complaining, we’ve had about 10 days with beautiful clear weather now, which is really nice šŸ™‚

Skating on Ramfjorden

Skating on Ramfjorden

Between all the aurora watching, we also found time for skating. Paul bought some skates and he was very keen to try them. On Sunday we got a text message from a friend who lives on the shore of Ramfjorden, to tell us the ice was safe and there was very little snow – good skating conditions! I had a day off on Monday, and the weather was good, so off we went…

Ramfjorden, with the back of Tromsdalstinden glowing red in the last sunlight Sunset on the opposite side

I had never skated on sea ice before, it’s a bit more challenging as the surface is not very smooth. We had a lot of fun though. We skated about 8 km, and got quite sore feet… we obviously need a bit more practice šŸ˜‰

Paul skating over a crack Giving my feet a much-needed break Back to where we started, with the blue light that comes after sunset

My new SLR camera can also take videos at very high resolution, something I hadn’t actually tried yet. We shot a few videos, and Paul edited them together to this nice movie:

What a nice day! The skating season is very short here, as once the snow comes you won’t be able to skate anymore. We’ve had a few snowfalls this winter, but we keep having periods with very mild temperatures which melts it all away. And what didn’t melt, will blow away in the strong winds we’re having. Oh well, by the end of April I’ll be cursing the snow, so I shouldn’t complain šŸ˜‰