“there’s a special kind of magic on nights like this, a certain sort of nostalgia when the past intermingles with the present and flirts with the future.”
― b.k. borison, lovelight farms
(this is a continuation of a one night/early morning northern lights journey started in my previous blog. check that blog out here if you have not read it yet!)
…even though the northern lights continued to unfurl its colors in an extravagant manner, i began to wrap up my time at the farmstead. I packed up my gear and got into my car. as i pulled out of the entry onto the county road, i drove off, eyes peeled for deer as they are prevalent in this region. but i was not done! i began to head to another location, another farm, this one inhabited by some friends. hopefully, this location would find the northern lights just as alluring!
all the way to my next location, i kept my eyes focused on looking for deer. that’s one of the things i don’t like about driving at night in areas of higher deer population. deer can just stroll out at any time. there will be darkness all around where the high beams from my vehicle doesn’t illuminate. all of a sudden, a deer can just stroll out onto the road. it’s relatively easy to see a deer once your eyes are adjusted to the darkness but i wouldn’t recommend driving 55 miles an hour with no headlights. you know…i do need to be able to keep my vehicle on the road!
an hour and a half or so later, i arrived at my destination. i actually did turn off my headlights as i pulled into the long, long, loooong driveway. i sat for a minute to let my eyes adjust to the darkness and then proceeded to drive forward. my wife had gone to this farm the previous night (it was now the wee early morning of the next day). this farm is owned by good friends of ours. my wife had gone there to check out the northern lights along with her friend as they live in relatively dark sky country just outside of st. croix falls in wisconsin. all they had to do was just had to step outside the house and look up to the skies! earlier, i had heard from her that they could actually make out colors of the northern lights with the naked eyes! so i was looking forward to seeing what i would capture with my camera!
i pulled forward in my vehicle slowly, trying to minimize the "crunching" of the tires on the dirt and gravel driveway so as not to wake everyone up (in retrospect, that was just silly wishing...a tire is going to "crunch" on a dirt and gravel driveway no matter how slow one goes). i can’t hear the crunching as i’m hearing impaired but i could feel the vibrations. i finally pulled up to the the end of the driveway where it loops around a tree and small garden area to allow you to head back out. i never fail to be in love with this piece of farmland when i visit. our friends bought it from the uncle of the husband. he grew up spending summers with his uncle at this farm and helping out when it was a working farm. i’ve never had the privilege of spending extended time on a farm. but i vaguely remember a time (a day? a week? a month? that i don’t remember…) when i baled hay as a young boy on a farm in the area where my grandpa had a cottage on lake wisconsin. that cottage was (and still is though now as a luxury home instead of a cottage) located in the boonies outside of lodi, wisconsin. baling hay was definitely hard work. that small bit of experience helps me to appreciate the hard work my friend put in working his uncle’s farm during the summers.
i got out of my vehicle, gently closed the door to be as quiet as possible and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. as they did, i began to walk around and just enjoy being there again. i walked through the mown grass in front of the house toward the silo and barn. standing on the threshold of where the mown grass transitions into a field left to grow as nature intended it to, i took in the expanse of stars in the sky hovering over the acres of wild pastureland. this farmland is one of a few places in my photography explorations that feels like home. i’m blessed to have friends who allow me a pretty wide latitude to explore their property day or night!
as long as i act like an adult, they’ll probably continue to let me explore their property. so it was out of the question that i would revert to my boyish and, i think, rather cute mischievousness, sneak over to the window of the bedroom where they sleep, repeatedly scratch on the window screen and make incessant hooting noises like an owl for the next hour. if i did, most likely they would know it was me as i would sound like a hearing impaired owl. “honey, wake up! i hear a strange sort of owl like it’s hearing impaired!”…. “oh wait a minute…that sounds like steve! doggone you stevie-boy!!” nor would it behoove me to go to the window of the room where my wife was sleeping and howl mercilessly like a wolf or coyote to startle her. some things i just know better…most of the time…well, some of the time…😉.
as i continued to gaze into the heavens, i saw the faint ghostly outlines of the northern lights and remembered why i was there. i walked back to my vehicle to grab my gear. i was cautious to be as noise-free as possible so as not to wake up my friends and my wife. rather than shut the trunk all the way after pulling out my backpack, i closed it to where it just rested before the latch would catch it. i put on my headlamp, switched it to red and started exploring around the property for potential cool images.
for the next hour and a half or so, i created images. i love this tranquil scene with the northern lights above. the ambient light of the outdoor lights staked in the ground lit up not only the house but the very cool working retro trailer. be sure to click on each of the following images to bring enlarge it for better viewing.
the northern lights showed no signs of slowing down its spectacular celestial light show. it would seem like things were beginning to dim and peter out and then…bam! beams and waves of bright colors would explode again that my camera sensor would capture more vividly than i was able to see with the naked eye!
two of the images i created were vertoramas (panning vertically instead of horizontally). I don’t create a lot of these kind of images at night. it is very difficult to keep the camera steady, even on a tripod, moving upward in succession so that it stays in the same alignment as the previous image. it’s not impossible; just difficult. it’s not just about overlapping images but also making sure the plane of the previous image is the same with each successive image so objects stay aligned. software like photoshop can align the images but it also adds more work down the line. i prefer to get it right as much as i can without having more work added later on.
in the dark of the night, all i had to use as a reference was a green level line in my camera viewfinder/lcd. a green level line means the camera is level. it still requires a longer exposure before the foreground and sky will show up so all i see initially in my viewfinder/lcd is a black screen.
at this point, you may be asking how, then, am i acquiring focus for the image? without getting into technical details that would probably just bore you, there are two ways i do it. my main technique is to up the iso a bit which brightens up the scene and then focus on a star until it is in focus. once the star is in focus, the foreground will usually be in focus as well due to it being beyond a certain focal point. then i turn my iso back down to a more reasonable level and do a longer exposure to help keep digital noise in an image to nothing or minimal. different photographers have different opinions of what works best for them. feel free to ask me more about my technique, including the second one, in the comments section at the end if you are interested in a more detailed answer.
back to the green level line…if it turns white, then the plane of the next image to come is no longer level with the previous image. it can be frustrating sometimes as, for me, it requires the ballhead (what holds the camera to the tripod) to be tight enough to keep movement minimal yet loose enough so i can pan upwards. too tight and the camera will pan with a sudden jerk (and most certainly out of plane) as i exert more strength on the ball of the ballhead to move it. too loose and the ball of the ballhead will move too quickly for a controlled pan upwards (also usually going out of plane) or just flop over from the weight of the camera. being patient and going slow is the only way to create these kind of images. with the ongoing fluidity and intensity of the northern lights, it’s hard to be patient especially if it is in the middle of an explosive moment that can literally change second to second!
the first vertorama i had a lot of fun with. i set up a low level light inside the "shed" that actually connects the barn to the silo and illuminated the window. i had a second low level light that i shone up and down the silo to bring it out of the darkeness a little bit. i simply walked over to the silo being careful to stay out of the camera's "eye" during the longer exposure i set up and proceeded to "bathe" the silo in soft lighting. you may wonder why the window has a darker pane than the other three. three of the panes had glass in it. the fourth was devoid of glass. the dark is the wood siding inside the shed.
this second image really showcases the power happening in the sky above! i really wanted to capture more of it but my camera would not pan up any further on my tripod. as it is, i was able to capture the "eye" where the lights seem to radiate outward from! the foreground trees add a spectacular silhouetted backdrop! the smaller trees in the background form a natural boundary of the farm property quite a ways back.
finally, i decided to call it a night. i packed up my gear and headed back to my car by the light of my red headlamp. a quick tip, by the way, if you are a photographer and use a headlamp with the red setting, remember to turn it off before creating images! i lost a few images as i kept forgetting the red light was on when i needed to check settings and the resulting images had red tones in them 🙄. i shut the trunk of my vehicle very gently, turned the key in the ignition and headed down the driveway in the dark. where the driveway met the street, i turned on my headlights and gunned it down the road! just kidding…my eyes stayed peeled for that jaywalking deer as i drove home. since i’m writing this today, you may assume i made it home in one piece!
the northern lights of these last two blogs were unbelievable! since then, i’ve had the great fortune of watching another spectacular northern lights show in the northern suburb of blaine, mn, just a few miles from where i live. i’ve shared a couple of images from that night on my “stephen hadeen photography” facebook page so be sure to check them out! as we wind down 2024 in the next few months and gear up for 2025, we potentially will continue to be seeing spectacular northern light shows due to the what is called “solar maximum”. here is one relatively recent article among others that you can read to get a better feel for what it is, how long it might last and how can affect the northern and southern lights.
so keep your eyes and ears open for more opportunities to see the northern lights if you are interested in them! it’s always a best guess if and when they happen as conditions can be rapidly changing. but there are many resources available to help you best plan for them. i use a a couple of free apps that can be downloaded on the app store if you have an iPhone. they are ‘northern lights forecasts” and “aurora alerts”. check them out!
feel free to share your thoughts, comments, etc. in the comments section below about the blog, the images or anything that came to mind while reading this blog. I love to read and respond to them all!
here are a couple of sample images created to show you how the images in the blog might look hanging in your home/business. shoot me an email or chat if you are interested in an image(s). i’d love to help put together an art piece for you that will bring you and others many years of viewing pleasure! with the upcoming holiday season that will be in session soon, a photographic art piece would also be a unique gift for that special family member or friend! as a small business owner trying with the ongoing goal of growing my photography business, i would be so thankful for purchases to help support my business!
lights over the farm 1 - 16"x24" photo print matted and framed
lights over the farm 2 - 20"x30" metal print
i will have one more art show coming up this year the first weekend in december. as we get closer to the date, i will be sure to share the details with you as it gets closer. early in 2025, unless something changes, i have some exciting news happening as well. i will share more details of that event as it becomes more concrete. in the meantime, i want to say that i really appreciate your support of my blogs, facebook and instagram postings, your appearance at my art shows if you’ve been to one or more of them and any purchases you might have made of my photographic art. thanks so much! it means the world!
with that, i’ll say so long for now and i will see you soon with more “images from my quiet world"!
You are a wise man to not hoot or howl at the windows! Love the pics. The lights were spectacular that night.