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.
A test shot through the windshield of my truck, just to see if anything was happening. When it is still light out, the northern lights are not always visible to the naked eye, but a camera can pick them up. I didn’t even bother trying to focus through the glass, but as you can see, I could still tell there were pillars of light already in the sky, even though it wasn’t dark yet.
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.
Still from my truck, but looking more north and I could see some pillars forming above the clouds.
Last shot I took from the highway (you can see some headlights in the distance) and this is what convinced me it was worth trying to move.
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.
Northern Lights in all their glory.
Another shot of the Northern Lights. Even with a 14mm lens, I could still not capture the whole scene as the lights were going so high into the sky and all along the horizon.
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.
I tried incorporating a nearby power pole into the shot, just to add at least a little bit of foreground interest.
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.