Aurora over Fishing Pond, near Chatanika River

Not to whine, but when is photo.net going to learn to get along with

Photoshop JPEGs? Okay - I guess it is a whine.

Amazing capture of the aurora.

Nicely framed with the uplighted ground.

Its not quite simple to get a shot like this.

Very nice!

Regards / Fredrik Ludvigsson

Amazing image, Expectacular natural phenomenon full of beauty.

One of the very best aurora shots I have seen. Good stuff Joseph.

wonderful composition. i think B&W would work great too!

Joe, You have what I believe is the finest aurora photograph that I can remember....Jim

Is this a composite image? If not, please provide us with the details of the exposure. I have never seen a moonlit sky so blue.

Mind-boggling. Great job capturing a truly elusive subject.

Too good !!!

an extordinary phenomenon captured perfectly!!! awesome work

this is a nice image but the slant of the foreground trees towards the center of the image is unrealistic. aurora doesn't do such things.

and that would be a levels adjustment (see attached image - left side is after and right side is before). Great night shot. I too agree this is a wonderful aurora photo. The building included for scale works exceptionally well.

 

If adjusting levels or curves is new to you then defintely check out an intro article I've posted on my site.

This is a single exposure. The moonlit sky is just ... blue. It is a very bright full moon - remember, the moon gets highest in the sky at the winter solstice - on a fairly clear night. Also, as auroras go, this one is only medium in brightness, so this is a fairly long exposure - 20-30 seconds at high ISO - somewhere between 1000 and 1600. I'd have to check. Anyway, that provides a very bright sky background.

One of the things I like about this photo is the way that the moving clouds seem to radiate away from the central "core" of the display, as if they were connected to it. Just a happy accident. I don't remember if I could even see those clouds. I do remember I was in snow deep enough that I was praying I wouldn't drop my spare battery and have to go look for it.

I "scouted" this location in mid-spring. It's the only place I found immediately north of town - on public property - that is accessible and that has a reasonably attractive unobstructed 360 degree view including the all-important northeast. It's also far enough away from town that there shouldn't be any skyglow except under the weirdest of weather conditions.

I love aurora hunting - I'd really like to get some photos "in the mountains," but that is vastly more difficult than it sounds near Fairbanks, because the terrain is all hills. The solution to "mountains" is probably "Canada" and the Kluanes, near Haines Junction in particular. Anyway.

I just posted a revised version with some changes. This has been through a few unnecessary JPEG cycles so pardon me if it looks chunky.

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/3994267-md.jpg

I mostly corrected the corner light falloff with a couple of gradient layers. I partially corrected the perspective tilt. I tried complete correction and the photo simply doesn't look right. The curtains in the aurora need to converge some or the photo lacks drama. But now the trees don't lean so obviously.

"Tilting" the rectilinear image stretches it vertically, which looks unnatural - and produces an unpleasant aspect ratio - so I remapped it to an equiangular projection. (An option in Panorama Tools.) I might also try fisheye.

I did some local contrast adjustment and sharpening.

This isn't necessarily what I think the final image should look like, but it's something to poke at.

I would like to contact you with hopes of publishing this photograph in a very quality coffee table publication but I can't get an email to you. Can you send me a phone contact or mailing contact that I can tell you more. Please see www.pplandscacpe.org Thank you, Richard

A lovely balanced piece of work ,a pleasure to view.

Cheers

Ferg