North Dakota Northern Lights
- Marci Johnson
- 21 minutes ago
- 3 min read
As a young girl, northern lights were a rare, almost mystical phenomenon.
But growing up on a farm gave me an advantage in viewing them. Away from city lights, my family's farm has dark skies that make any astronomical observations, including northern lights, much more readily available. My mom or dad would share the news--"The northern lights are out!"--and my sisters and I would rush outside to squint up at the dark sky. After we let our eyes adjust to the darkness, I'm sure there were gentle "oohs" and "ahhs," probably followed by protesting when we had to go back to bed.
As an adult, northern lights (scientifically, aurora borealis) dancing in the night sky have me chasing them with my camera, taking quiet moments to simply enjoy a quiet, shimmering night sky, and still losing sleep.
I only have a couple of memories from my younger years of observing this nighttime beauty. In recent years, however, newly developed technologies improve the odds of viewing this spectacular display. Scientific advances have helped to improved forecasts of aurora activity. Smartphone apps can send a notification when the likelihood of northern lights strengthens. Concurrently, camera technology has become more readily accessible, with the vast majority of Americans owning a smartphone. Even when the northern lights aren't strong enough to view with the human eye, a quick three second exposure with a smartphone can show the green glow. Although I don't usually count my cell phone photos as wall-worthy images due to their low resolution, I use a quick snapshot to decide if it's time to venture outside and set up the Canon camera on a tripod.
If the lights are out, I head outside.
In still images, northern lights look static, unmoving. Given the opportunity to observe aurora, the lights move in various ways, often said to be dancing. Sometimes, the colorful beams slowly ripple, from one side of the horizon to the other. If observed from a latitude far enough north, the lights can be visible overhead, and then sometimes move like lightning, pillars flashing as if electricity is running through them. The science behind northern lights? Coronal mass ejections (a giant explosion) from the sun's surface shoots plasma across outer space. When that plasma reaches earth, it collides with particles in our atmosphere, and those collisions emit colorful light. Aurora are strongest at the north and south pole due to the draw of earth's magnetic field (southern lights are aurora australis).
Whether you enjoy the science or simply want to focus on the dancing skies, northern lights are enchanting.
Although I'm not a landscape photographer by trade, chasing northern lights images challenges me to consider landscape elements, such as the foreground. The lights are beautiful on their own, but silhouetting a compelling subject in front of the lights always adds to an images. My favorite places to photograph northern lights are near Kenmare, ND, at my family's farm or my grandparent's farmstead. I'm familiar with all of the potential foreground subjects there and hardly have to think twice about composing an image while I'm adjusting my tripod and camera settings in near darkness. But I also enjoy the thrill and excitement of creating an image in a new location. Either way, I'll keep venturing out under the dark skies to chase the lights and keep making images to treasure and share.
All of these images and more are available for purchase as fine art prints here.
