Chasing Aurora Borealis - My week with a camera #3

Having decided to try and make a weekly post on Hive of my week's efforts with a camera, this is the next instalment, Week #3.

I regularly keep an eye open on the Aurora Borealis apps for predictions much like a weather forecast. Except this is a space weather forecast. I don't profess to be an expert in the statistics with fangled terms such as "Bz" and "nT" but the summaries in these apps usually give an indication to the great unwashed such as myself a clue as to what to expect.

This last week the Aurora activity has been quite good. So this week my camera bag has been packed with batteries charged ready for a quick getaway in to the dark after any sign of Aurora!

It's very much a typical thing to find that after a few weeks of clear skies with no Aurora to suddenly find as soon as the Aurora makes an appearance, the skies cloud over!! The struggle with clear skies over the UK is real!

This is my week of hits (and some misses):

Cleethorpes Aurora Star Trails

I originally intended to venture out to a local windmill about 15 miles from home with the aim of shooting the sky with the mill as foreground interest. As I arrived at the mill, clouds were rolling in. Slightly depressed at seeing the clouds, I took a look at the weather forecast and saw that Cleethorpes on the east coast was forecast clear. A quick Look on the satnav informed me we were only an hour away. With caution thrown to the wind, we set off to Cleethorpes. I say caution because, this night was a night before an early start for work in the morning!

I didn't set out to shoot a star trail; I had set up to shoot a timelapse sequence. I seem to have inadvertently lined up Polaris bang in the middle.

Cleethorpes Beach, 16.10.25 between 22:10 and 22:28-ish, this is 200 x 4 second exposures with a one second interval between each frame.

Aurora pillars

This is a still from the above 200 images, processed as a standalone photo. I see quite a few photos of Aurora where they've been edited heavily with masses of saturation. Here I've done the same. This over saturated processing seems to do much better on regular social media even though this doesn't look true to life to me.

Fail - what the heck Photoshop?

When processing the above star trail sequence, I used the Flatten command and Photoshop decided to have a digital tantrum. This is what Photoshop gave me. Ever so slightly abstract!

Flamborough Head Lighthouse

Another night on the east coast at Flamborough and the Aurora forecast was looking good. In the end, all I got was pink / red diffuse glow but the clouds were ever so slightly getting in the way!

I've promised myself that one day I'll be stood shooting Flamborough Lighthouse and there will be enough mist in the air for great beams. One day....

Beacon

The Aurora forecasts on this night weren't looking great and I wasn't expecting to catch any colour at all. So it was a nice surprise to catch a bit of pink / red diffuse glow with the beacon as foreground interest.

Shot well after midnight on the cliffs at Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire.

Playing peek a boo with a lighthouse!

You know you're getting tired and should probably go home when you start playing peek a boo with a lighthouse at 1:30 am!

And finally...

I'm not one for jumping on band wagons or the latest craze but it was cool to figure out the correct ChatGPT prompts to create this.

I seem to have added 3 x flashlights, quite appropriate!

About me:

I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in landscape, urbex and artistic model photography. I like to collaborate with other photographers and occasionally shoot outside my comfort zone.

Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/fastchrisuk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fastchris/