I Photographed The Best Northern Lights In My Backyard
I never fancy seeing northern lights at my backyard, not to mention photographing it. That’s why we traveled to Iceland, the Arctic Circle in the past.
Ever since we moved to the Pacific Northwest, we occasionally had opportunities to witness northern lights in the northern part of US. I grasped every single opportunity I could to try photographing northern lights close to home, but none of these occasions panned out to be great.
When I saw the latest news of “massive solar storm”, I knew I had to try my “luck” again.
Photo Tip
To photograph aurora borealis, you need to have a number of factors in place, in addition to the solar storm.
Good weather with a clear sky
Night time (this one is no brainer, right?)
A location without light pollution, eg. moon light or city light
A north-facing open view of sky, if you are not in the Arctic Circle. Or south-facing if you are deep in the south hemisphere for the southern lights
Ideally no wind if you have trees or moving subjects in your photo frame
The right camera equipment, eg. a fast wide angle lens, a tripod
I wrote several blogs about how to photograph northern lights and where to photograph northern lights in the past, and won’t repeat myself here.
My Situation
✔️ Great weather with clear sky. Washington is notorious about the rain. My last few attempts all failed due to bad weather, either the rain or heavy rain clouds. Even better, it wasn’t in the winter or cold at all.
❌ Unfortunately my husband was in the east coast. My best photo opportunities happened well into my kids bed time.
✔️ We live far out of large cities and have little light pollution. It was new moon, perfect for astrophotography
🅾️ We have a north facing deck with sky view surrounded by tall trees. Since I couldn’t travel, this was my best bet
✔️ The weather was perfect with no wind. My trees would look tack sharp in my long exposure
✔️ I have photographed landscape with two cameras on two tripods simultaneously for many times over the past 10+ years. Equipment was not an issue.
There was a mix of pros and cons of my situation, but I decided to give it a try anyway, on our deck facing our backyard. The rest of the story was in the video above.
This timelapse of northern lights video was compiled from over 800 photos. It took me 4 hours to take all the photos from our deck from 11pm to 3am. Although I stood in the pitch dark environment for hours, I was constantly at awe at the magnificent dancing colors in the sky.
It was the best northern lights photography experience I've ever had, far better than what I've captured in Norway, Finland or Iceland before.
What’s the best? I didn't even need to travel this time. I must be super lucky again.