joebloe

Yup, got the chuckle. :) I could do without the cartoon head.

The pinhole I used in my 5D's body cap on Sunday was screwed up.

Here's a photo from an outing today with a brand new pinhole. This is

about 1/10 sec @ 3200 ISO with the body laid down in the grass.

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.

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

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

This one is a very accurate representation of this display. It was almost pure green and very bright - you can see how it cuts through the low-lying mercury vapor lit clouds. We have all kinds here. I did photograph 3 brilliant, multicolored, fast-moving coronas this spring, and missed more. For an "inactive" part of the solar cycle it was an outstanding season.

 

For a while the pink lighting disturbed me, but so many people have commented positively on this photo that it has begun to grow on me. I have all kinds of "plain old" moonlit et cetera auroras and it's nice to have some variety.

 

Thanks for your comment!

We don't as a rule see red auroras here in Fairbanks. We are too *far* into the auroral zone!

 

I'm not overwhelmed by the composition. I avoid large expanses of dark terrain in my aurora photos. A little moonlight is really helpful. The frame looks awkward. Crop it.

 

I hope you got some other photos of this aurora. Even given that you have a good location with regular clear skies, and monitor solar activity (http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/latest_events/, http://www.n3kl.org/sun/index.html, http://www.spaceweather.com ...) you might go a year without seeing a nice one.

 

People don't realize how difficult serious aurora photography is. It's extremely time-consuming, the weather can be horrible, it can involve a lot of driving during the season and during off-season scouting, it involves a lot of sitting around for hours at a time cold and bored for something that may not happen, you have to explain to your boss over and over again why you won't be in till 10AM or noon, you have to keep tabs on solar activity every day, and even given all that you usually have only 5 minutes to take a good shot. THE SHOT might come next week or 5 years from now.

 

Good job. You can crop this one and sell it. I'm giving it 6/6 based on the rarity of the shot and its potential after a little cropping. I have more like 6.5/6.5 in mind.

Very bright aurora taken NE UAF Campus 10-11 PM. Pretty cold at the

time, minus 25F or so. I was in a hurry and took most of these photos

without gloves.

One of the same series does appear in the Space.com 2004-2005 Aurora gallery. It was taken with my D60.

 

http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=ig250_hall_02.jpg&cap=Photographer%20Joseph%20N%20Hall%20took%20this%20stunning%20picture%20over%20Murphy%20Dome%2C%20Fairbanks%20AK%2C%20on%20April%2012%2C%202005.%20The%20extra%20color%20and%20the%20quarter%20moon%2C%20make%20a%20beautiful%20backdrop%20for%20a%20bright%20aurora.%20Click%20to%20enlarge.

 

"Nice" URL, huh?

 

Film works better but I didn't appreciate that until I decided to recommission the 645. I'll be using a lot of negative film - to accomodate a higher dynamic range than digital sensors - this coming season.

 

Thank you!

Trusty old 645.

Showy example of winter light pillars.

 

See http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/eyes/pillars.htm.

Remarkable. Enlarge it to 6' high and put it on a wall so

viewers can immerse themselves in the perspective. WOW is

all I can say. Great planning, great weather, and great

luck. No need for artsy-fartsy rationalizations to give

a 7/7. The first POW that has grabbed me in a long time.

Enjoy this one!

I wish I could say I planned this but the photos just happened. I went to the site trying to look for pictures of the bridges, boaters, etc., but what happened was that there was this perfect warm grazing winter desert light. Raw out of the camera the photos were "okay" but something nifty happened when I reduced the brightness a bit. Glad you and others have enjoyed this happy accident.

Wow, cool subject.

Doesn't get any better than this.

What IS it? Cool. ...

Abstract, peaceful, voyeuristic, and a little bit creepy.

A perfect exposure of ... something ...

Nice one. Cliched but well executed and dramatic.

Sultry, full of mood, well lit and exposed. To me here it looks dithered but I expect that's just an artifact. I'm not sure where "Lost" comes from. Looks more like "Pout" to me.

Here we go! Good sturdy fill-the-frame composition. Overexposed in the upper right though.

Intriguing but ... missing something. Is the eye slightly out of focus? Very close to being a much better photograph.

Hmm, overexposed. And personally I'd frame it much tighter, with the fungus filling almost the entire frame. The grass creeping in from the left is especially irritating to my eye. Maybe it's just me.

The colors and subjects in this photo have tremendous potential but this incredibly dull composition wastes them. "Make the subject fill the frame." There's a dozen good pictures waiting here, or maybe 100. Go get 'em.

Seems like this would work better if more symmetrically composed, to accentuate the abstract quality.

Appears to be a gorgeous photo ... wish it were larger so I could do more than speculate. Love the purple/cyan/mauve/yellow mixture.