Took this image about 3 AM on the 4th of November. It's been years since I've been able to get out an shoot Aurora in WI, mostly because activity has been low, and also because to get to a decent dark sky spot, I need to drive several hours (one way) to get away from light pollution. Anyway, I got up there about 10:00 and was met with cloudy skies (forecasts were wavering between 'party cloudy' and 'mostly clear') and waited... and waited... Finally the skies started to break-up a bit, and finally become clear. Approaching 1 AM, I was about to head back, thinking the storm was a 'dud', but decided to get out of the car and check one more time to see if there was any glimmer of hope in the sky. One trick I learned years ago was to NOT look directly at the area I am scanning, but just adjacent to it, because our eyes are more sensitive to light in the peripheral vision - at least when it's dark (something to do with the rods vs cones in our eyes). Sure enough, I saw some 'puffs' of light glancing off the upper atmosphere. I've seen this before, and it's usually a good sign of an impending storm (or a storm just starting to fade... so I hung out a while longer. There were some diffuse 'ribbons' and A LOT of red 'puffs' higher up in the sky, but not much that was really photogenic. Finally, at about 3 AM, things started to heat up and 'beams' started to form. I normally shoot wides when shooting Aurora (24mm or wider), but this scene I had scouted years ago, I knew was ripe for a 35 or 50mm. So... while I've owned a 50mm 1.2 GM for a while... I haven't really found a good landscape use for it, until now... Shot this with the Sony GM 50mm f1.2 on my Sony A7rIV. What was a bit of a bummer was that the red 'puffs' while easily seen with naked eye, just weren't long enough duration in their 'puffery' to catch with the short shutter speed I had to use with the 50, in order to maintain structure in the Aurora. I think this shot is a good compromise with showing some of the structure of the beams, while also allowing some of that beautiful reddish/purple hue of the puffs to come through. For anyone who's shot aurora before, the resultant images can be REALLY intense green.. but this doesn't really represent what the Aurora looks like when viewing it live, IMO. So, I processed more like my favorite slide film (Fuji Provia) captured Aurora, with a more 'silvery green' color that isn't anywhere near as saturated. Anyway... I pulled an all-nighter to get this shot, and was able to make the 5+ hour drive back home on sheer adrenalin, after 'hitting' my first Wisconsin Aurora in several years. Pretty happy with the shoot, even though I've seen much more intense storms before. Worth the trip :-)
Thx. I wasn't much farther north than Sturgeon Bay. The issue with this storm is that when it first hit... there wasn't much action. I almost left ~ 1-1:30 AM. The action really got started around 2:00 and peaked around 3:00 AM or so. Many of the images in US seem to be west of WI, because it was 'earlier' in the night for them.
