With the highly anticipated auroral storm of May 10th nearing, I decided to try a few photographic compositions at Medicine Lake, in Jasper National Park.
There were a few images I had planned on shooting there if a storm such as this one was forecasted, and would only work if they were overhead, and facing south.
Me and a friend went to Medicine Lake during twilight, and we started imaging the sky to see if there was some activity.
That’s when we saw the sky was beginning to evolve into a once-in-a-lifetime display of Aurora Borealis.
At this location, I set out on a different composition, and after I captured it, I noticed that the most prominent aspect of the storm was facing due south, draping the sky like a Broadway Theatre's curtain.
It was so colourful and bright, I had a feeling with the right exposure, I could get a fairly smooth video straight from my Sony A7RIV, paired with my Laowa 15mm f2 Zero-D, and this setup did not disappoint!
I have tried many times to get a non-timelapse video of an aurora before, but was unsuccessful, as they were always too dim.
However, with the luminance of the May 10th aurora, I can say my disbelief was quickly halted, and I could not believe what I was seeing before my eyes.
Even at f2, shooting at about 1/15th of a second (to match the lens's focal length), I was able to capture the luminance and colour from this incredible display.
This is not an incredible or cinematic video, but a window into the greatness of that storm.
I had friends in the southern USA send me photos and videos of the Auroral display, bewildered that something I had tried to convince them to come to my home in Jasper to see, was visible from their backyards.
To quote the EarthSky Editorial Team:
“When it came, it was even stronger than predicted, at “extreme” levels. So many people saw amazing displays of auroras from places at latitudes as low as Mexico, the Bahamas, western Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Argentina. Wonderful that so many got to see it!”
17 июн 2024
