Northern Lights in Alaska
The Northern Lights
Even though I am
in the northernmost state of the United States, and even though I was expecting
to see amazing things this summer in Alaska, for some reason I wasn’t convinced
that I would be seeing the Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as the “Northern
Lights.” But here we are, week one of the Alaska season and we have seen them
twice! Well, some people saw it twice…
Day two of our
weeklong adventure cruise between Ketchikan and Juneau the passengers were
awoken in the wee morning hours by the on-duty mate to a call for Northern
Lights. Unfortunately I was either not
awakened…or too tired from working too hard. Needless to say I was pretty
bummed that I missed them, but very excited that most of the guest were able to
witness it. Some guest grabbed some great pictures as well. I crossed my
fingers that we would not only have another clear night, but that the light
show would happen again.
Day three was it. It
was pretty clear at sunet and slowly getting clearer as the night went on. I
was too excited to go to sleep so I stayed up working on the millions of tasks
that I try and keep on top of as expedition leader. Finally around eleven I laid down in bed only
to find myself too anxious to fall asleep.
Just before midnight the call came in….. Northern Lights!
What luck. Great
weather conditions, no moonlight, and a well times solar flare provided an
incredible light show for us. It started off strong with hues of neon green
covering the southern part of the sky near the horizon. I snagged a few
pictures and then put my camera down to help all the other budding
photographers fiddling with their cameras in the dark. The lights came and went
and came and went so after two hours everyone was pretty dialed in and getting
great shots. They were very appreciative for the nighttime impromptu
photography lesson and I did manage to sneak in a few shots of my own when the
lights would do some new spectacular array. At one point they were just pulsing
and flowing across the sky. It was a long time coming and I imagine those
couple of hours out in the middle of Southeast Alaska, helping those people get
incredible photos is going to stick with me for a long time.
Hi Dai Mar, that was really a creative idea to take a picture of me taking a picture of the Northern Lights. That had to be my favorite experience on the cruise since it wasn't expected at all for this time of year. Thank you for the mini photography lesson, but looks like your pictures turned out much better than my blurry ones. Any chance you could email me a few of the raw files that you have? Hope you are having as great of weather as we had the first week!
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Emily Heim
Alaska is one of the most beautiful place and for viewing northern lights it could be the best place. In sept. month you can see the beautiful northern lights.
ReplyDeletePlan trip to see the northern lights
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ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these photography tips. It was very useful in my Alaska northern lights tours.
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