Please open the larger, less compressed image here: http://www.geocities.com/venhaus1

Seems that this one suffered from compression even in the larger file, so please review the higher res. pic on my website. Over the last year or so, I've spent countless hours freezing in the dark, and have driven literally thousands of miles in search of a decent, dark spot to photograph Aurora over still water, and with an interesting composition. Although the Aurora wasn't that spectacular to the naked eye, the film really recorded quite a bit. This shot was about a 3 hour drive (one way) from my house. The hardest part about getting a shot like this is getting out to a really dark spot when there is an Aurora event- and this is VERY hard to predict. This was about the 25th time I had actually gone out to a remote location in anticipation of Aurora (and the previous 24 times, I did not fire the shutter ONCE). The best Auroras usually occur around local midnight, but I took this one at 2:30 AM, and had been driving since 5:30 pm that evening before I arrived at the spot at 11:30pm (checking out several lakes first). I hiked about 1/4 mi. and sat in the cold for several hours until I had a window of about 10 minutes to shoot, and then the Aurora was too dim to photograph. This type of scenario is not for the easily spooked, since I was in an area that has Bears, and every little rustle in the brush from a rabbit, raccoon, or deer gets the imagination going :-) My scanner is not the best at this type of shot (Minolta Scan Speed), but you'll get a pretty good idea of what I was working with :-) My apologies for the long-winded explanation, but I thought the story behind this shot might be worthwhile for some.