This year has seen a lot of opportunities to look up and find a picture, or just a sense of wonder (usually both, for me). Whether it’s been the Aurora Borealis or meteor showers or spectacular sundogs there are so many opportunities in 2021, and I’ve probably photographed the sky more in the past 6 months than I have in the past 6 years.

Part of that is from the pandemic erasing many of the people-centred photography I was doing previously. A lot of it is freeing up more time to be able to wander and wonder and focus on the natural environment.

I’ve seen a lot of Milky Way photographs this year, and it fired up the desire to do it again myself. The one and only time I’d photographed our galaxy was a few years ago during an epic night at a dark sky preserve, in Cape St. Mary bird sanctuary in Newfoundland. This weekend, a night with a new moon (preventing any light pollution from obscuring faint stars), a clear cloudless night and no work commitments the next day meant the time was right to try again!

A quick online search for dark sky areas in Manitoba turned up Spruce Woods Provincial Park. I knew of this park for its near-desert conditions and sand dunes, but wasn’t aware of its status among sky-watchers. Despite the 2-hour drive (each way) all doubts were erased the second I got out of my car and looked up. The star-scape was absolutely breath-taking! There really is no substitute for a complete lack of light pollution — the best camera, lenses or software won’t make up for the night sky being obscured.

This really is the most vital step — finding as dark a sky as possible. This can be as simple as a quick Google search, but don’t think that a quick half-hour drive away from a city will do it — if you’re photographing infinity a few kilometres won’t change a thing. Prep yourself for a few hours drive, and keep in mind that light pollution can also come from the sun. Depending on the time of the year, ‘true’ night won’t come until well after sundown and well before sunrise. (Right about now, true night comes after midnight until about 3 a.m., with the pictures you see here being taken from 1-2 a.m.)

A wide angle lens to cover a great expanse of sky is a must, but equally important is how much light it can gather. An aperture of f/1.4 or f/2 is ideal and help prevent the need to crank up your ISO to noisy extremes.
Don’t forget the flipside to your aperture: your shutter speed. A wider aperture allows a ‘faster’ shutter speed. Anything longer than about 25 seconds will introduce ‘trailing’ to the stars, from the earth’s rotation. So, try keep your time to about 20 seconds maximum.

If you’re curious to try your hand at photographing our galaxy, a little time spent researching ahead of time will save you a lot longer time dealing with potentially serious problems in the field later. Find a dark sky area and prepare yourself for working there in total darkness! Things like bug spray, a flashlight (having a red filter or red light will help you see but not ruin your night vision) and measures to stay safe among wildlife, if applicable (for example, keeping safe among black bear populations is a common issue in Manitoba parks) will go a long way to having a positive experience.

Good luck! Look up in wonder!

The Milky Way rises in the south sky above Marsh Lake, in Manitoba’s Spruce Woods Provincial Park. Adding a foreground element can add visual interest to your composition, and a very valuable sense of perspective.

A horizontal composition - and let’s be honest, a lot of luck in timing - allowed me to include some of the many fireflies blinking in the air around me during this photo session. A long 20-second exposure recorded them as the green wavy lines to the right.

I turned my camera away from the south, where the Milky Way was, towards the east where the earthly elements made a pleasing (to my eye) composition. I liked seeing the vast fields of stars and the different mood this represented. There is almost no enhancement to the colour balance on this and all shots presented here.

This slightly-surreal scene is an example of thinking and acting quickly to the unexpected during a photo shoot. Despite the late hour (2 a.m.) the occasional car drove past on a nearby road, and I noticed that when they did, their headlights lit up a few trees along this marshy lake. When I heard another car approach far off in the distance, I knew this lighting would repeat itself — sure enough, once I set my camera to this view the trees slowly lit up with a ghostly light and my timing ensured the actual car and headlights hadn’t intruded onto the scene yet. The result was an ambiguous scene with a vague sense of mystery — a picture of a mood or a feeling more than what was actually there.

Goddesses, Dragons and Ancestors

This past month has seen a lot of different photography for me, from portraits to street to even wildlife (OK, pelicans), but I’m returning to the topic of Northern Lights because…well, because magic doesn’t happen very often.

And that’s the only way to describe looking up and seeing the sky dance with softly glowing colours, in the kind of soft comforting silence you can only get from true solitude.

The aurora borealis is a result of solar radiation interacting with the Earth’s upper atmosphere — think of what happens to a neon bulb when you run electricity through it — but standing beneath it, it’s hard to reduce it to just that. There are a lot of legends surrounding the Northern Lights — from goddesses ushering in a new day, to dragons battling for good and evil and (most poetically, to me) the First Nations of North America seeing them as echoes of departed people moving and speaking to them in the infinity of the sky.

My latest aurora encounter began after a long day working. From the numbers coming in on solar activity, and an admin on a Facebook group far more versed in crunching the data, it looked like Friday night/Saturday morning would offer very good chances for spotting the Lights. Happily, the clouds and cold of recent days had departed and it looked ideal for trying one’s luck.
With that, I set out around midnight for a 2 hour drive away from the light pollution - and unfortunately increasing crowds - of the city. Several times I stopped by the side of a highway to gaze at the lights which already had made an appearance…I knew I’d made the right decision despite being on Hour 17 without sleep.

Pulling into my destination all weariness and doubt immediately fell away, as how right my choice was dazzled the sky overhead. Far from being confined low to the horizon, these lights were far brighter and covered at least half the sky. Like I said: magic!

Our sun is currently entering into an active phase of its regular cycle, so there’s a good chance these displays will return. My humble advice, if you want to witness them for yourself: approach them reverently and with respect and take the time to let it unfold. Aurora are unpredictable - they may show up early, or not until late into the night, and they may dance for hours, or minutes.
Set aside more time than you originally planned. It’s rare that we get an opportunity to sit in silence, with no demand to ‘do’ something or justify our time. Make the most of it!

The hot new activity of late winter/early spring in Manitoba (for better or worse) is aurora-spotting, thanks to an upswing in solar activity. The Northern Lights are notoriously fickle — one night they appear, the next they don’t and there’s no set time when they ‘usually’ show up. Forecasting is vague, but maybe it’s all these factors that make it so magical when it finally does appear before your eyes.

True to their name, the further north you go the more visible they become. Near the capital city down south, they are usually a glowing line on the horizon, but occasionally the output from solar flares or sunspots is high enough that shimmering bands of green and violet can appear overhead. Regardless, moving as far from city lights and its attendant light pollution will only make it easier to see, with the happy benefit of seeing just how many stars do fill the inky black night sky.
Happily, the regular cycle of our sun is tracking upwards, so the months ahead should give more opportunities to see (and photograph) them yourself.

On that note, these images were made with a DSLR and a wide angle (24mm) lens, wide open at f/1.4 and 20 seconds. Depending on your focal length, any longer than 20-25 seconds and you’ll start to have the stars ‘trail’ or blur from the rotation of the Earth. Some photographers crank up their ISO to 6400 or above in order to get much shorter exposure times, or because their lenses don’t open up past f/2.8 or higher — that’s a (somewhat) viable option now that digital sensors are so much better, but I prefer to keep my ISO as low as possible.
Also keep in mind that ‘infinity’ focus on your lens doesn’t actually focus on infinity! Simply turning your lens all the way to the infinity setting will result in blurry stars. If you have Live View on your camera, turn it on, zoom in on a bright star and manually focus your lens until it’s sharp, then leave your focus where it is and shoot away.

Good luck!

The aurora borealis dances in the sky above the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg.

The red flashlight from a head lamp of fellow photographer leaves a trail during a long exposure. Red lights are used for night photography because they don’t ruin the photographer’s night vision.

A few aurora spotters watch silently beneath the lights, with the lights of nearby small towns and farms on the horizon.

I had thought the aurora had died down for the night, and was driving home when one look through my rear-view mirror showed they had flared back up again. Did I mention the Northern Lights are fickle and unpredictable?

Star trails made using the StarStax app (see previous blog post for details on the app).

As the world turns

I’ve never tried my hand at astrophotography, but recently I learned of a traditional Thai “spirit house” in rural Manitoba. This phenomenon is commonplace almost everywhere in Thailand, a devoutly Buddhist nation with a prior history of animism and spirit worship - but understandably rare in Manitoba.
Once I saw it for myself, though, I knew almost immediately that its juxtaposition with a faraway land and culture would best be expressed by a show of the Northern Lights with it. While the aurora did not make an appearance - yet - I did have a crystal-clear sky to work with and a perfect vantage point centering on Polaris, which would offer a focal point for my image.

Adding to the excitement was the fact Manitoba is currently in the grips of a brutal cold snap, and my set-up was done in temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius. It’s nothing proper clothing and preparation can’t handle, but it definitely made working slower and more challenging. As did hearing a pack of coyotes howling in the woods surrounding the site - something the resident sled dogs responded to in kind!

I’m happy with how the shot turned out - while I would have preferred a show of the Aurora I was lucky that a ‘radial’ type display of star trails could still be had with this unique cultural marker. On the technical side, I used a free program called Star StaX and combined 60 separate photographs (looking basically like the second shot here) to make the final lead image. I’d recommend this program, it’s easy and basically self-explanatory to use, does not downsize or reduce your final image, and did I mention it’s free? The third image gives a view of the app’s homepage; be sure to select the download that corresponds to your Mac’s current operating software.