On the evening of March 23, 2023 I had the chance to view the best showing of the Northern Lights I have ever seen. It is not uncommon to get a glimpse of the Northern Lights on the horizon here in Montana, but this was the first time I had seen them so spectacularly that they were actually overhead and even on occasion extending into the sky to the south behind me.
I have a couple of apps I use to track the Northern Lights, also referred to as the Aurora Borealis, so I knew there was a pretty good chance of a good showing that night, but the clouds were starting to close in so I wasn’t optimistic that I would be able to view them. After thinking about it for a while, and with a little prompting from my wife, I decided to grab some gear and head out anyway (Great Falls, Mt.) I headed out of town to the north and found a spot to park to wait and see what happened. As I was sitting and waiting for dark, there were clouds in almost every direction except for a clearing to the West, so my fears were starting to become true. There was a good view of the crescent moon and Venus in the cloud break, so at least there was something to look at.
As twilight started to fall, I took a quick test shot through the windshield of my truck, and sure enough, I could already start to see some pillars forming in the sky. Since it was not quite dark yet, they were not really visible to the naked eye. I thought at the very least maybe I would be able to get a couple of shots before the clouds completely obscured my view.
Once darkness started to set in, I was starting to see some activity in the sky to the North East of me. I was parked alongside the highway to start, as I was just kind of waiting to see what would happen, but the cars driving by were very distracting, and it also feels a little bit dangerous with speeding cars so near. So I drove down a little side road just to get off the highway. Unfortunately, I did not put a lot of thought into where I was going. I was just kind of frantic wanting to find a spot to setup. Between the clouds and the fickleness of the aurora, I wasn’t sure how much time I had, so I didn’t want to spend my time finding the best spot and potentially missing the show entirely. So I ended up in a spot where I had power lines overhead that were kind of distracting and not a lot of interest in the foreground. I did my best to try and use one of the power poles to add a little bit of interest to the shots. The photograph at the top of this post was my first test shot from the location so it wasn’t even dark yet.
As I was fumbling around in the dark I quickly realized that in my half-hearted attempt leaving the house, I had forgotten a lot of equipment I would have liked to have with me. I had recently cleaned a bunch of things out of my camera bag as well, since I was helping with a project at work I didn’t want to be hauling a lot of extra stuff back and forth. I found that I only had one Arca-Swiss plate for mounting my cameras on a tripod. I knew I wanted to have at least two cameras going (and ideally a third, which I also forgot was not in my bag anymore) so that was a problem. I eventually remembered I keep an old cheap tripod in my truck for photographic emergencies such as this. Of course, when I got it out I found that it was actually broken. Since it bounces around in my truck, who knows when that might have happened. And also of course, with it being a cheap tripod, it had its own style of mounting plate that was not Arca-Swiss compatible. Luckily I found that if I loosened the jaws on my ball head as far as they would go I could cram the cheap plate (since it was plastic) into the metal jaws of the Arca-Swiss mount and make it work. So then I was able to have two cameras going, since I knew I wanted to have at least one dedicated to a time lapse. With northern lights photography, you are usually working with shutter speeds too slow to hand hold, so a tripod is a must. I believe for most of the shots I was working between about 2 seconds and 5 seconds of shutter speed. I think my ISO was between about 1600 and 3200 and I kept both lenses wide open at an aperture of 2.8.
I was shooting with my Canon R5 with the Canon RF 15-35 2.8 lens and then I had my Canon R6 with a Rokinon 14mm 2.8 all manual lens setup as my dedicated time lapse rig. I had my Canon RF 50mm 1.2 lens along and I was hoping to try and get some shots with it, but I just didn’t have anything interesting enough to really use that lens for. I needed a subject of some kind to do a more tight in shot with that lens. So I elected to just stay wide and take in as much of the scene as I could. Even with the wide 14mm lens, I still could not take in the whole scene. This may be one of the few times when I wish I had something even wider than 14mm. Typically when this happens I would just create a panorama, but with a moving subject such as the Northern Lights, that’s not really possible.
Eventually the clouds did start to encroach more, and it was also getting late and I had to get up for work the next day, so I had to head home. If it had been a weekend I probably would have stayed out a bit longer just because it was so amazing. Despite my lack of gear and other mishaps, I still had a great time. And of course, lessons were learned about being prepared, and I also need to do some pre-scouting so if I get into this situation again, I will have a designated spot picked out to be setup at. I think the time lapse I took turned out pretty good and I have a link to my YouTube channel for that below.