It's an addiction
Aurora hunting is a compulsion that is robbing me of sleep...but the FOMO is real and very strong.
Once you photograph your first aurora you're hooked!
I spent many months going out late at night every time the apps on my phone alerted me that an aurora was imminent. I came home after driving around for hours looking to the south with nothing to report. I'd see the photos of stunning displays being posted to Facebook from people living nearby and curse my rotten luck that I missed it again! One night when I was out on the hunt I started seeing live updates on FB from a guy in town... how come he was getting these amazing pictures and I was looking at a drab sky? I finally asked the right question, the one that set my aurora hunting journey onto the fast track and has resulted in many sleepless night since. It turns out you rarely see those amazing colours with your bare eyes, you need a camera sensor with a slow shutter speed to capture them. We may sometimes seem auroras in grey scale but rarely in colour, especially where I live in mainland Australia. The funny thing is that on several of my unsuccessful hunts I saw grey streaks in the sky and assumed they were funky clouds or light pollution. So it turns out that I wasn't as much of a failure at aurora hunting as I had assumed, I just never realised that I was seeing was what I was actually out looking for!
My first official colour capture came the very next night, a wash of pinks that was Aurora Australis in all its graininess captured on my Iphone 8plus. The feeling of excitement was indescribable. The photos themselves were not very good, but the joy in finally capturing the aurora with my own hands and seeing it on my phone was a high that lasted for weeks.
I started quickly accruing cameras and tripods etc to allow me to capture better quality images. It has been a big learning curve but I've been having so much fun and I can slowly start to see improvements. I really want to thank all the amazing aurora hunters who share their photography on online communities. It has been a matter of monkey see, monkey do with me. I really appreciate the beauty of the professional photographer's images and I have learnt a lot about composition and settings.
I am heading out on the hunt more and more, and always on the look out for locations nearby that offer interesting foregrounds. I still feel the same aurora rush every time I see the elusive colours on the camera display.
My first photograph on Aurora Australis
MY FAVOURITE RESOURCES
Security Cams for Night Sky Imaging
Space Weather Live & Glendale app
Astronomical Society of Victoria
Astronomical Society of Tasmania
Allsky Camera Facebook Group
Rob Shea Photography YouTube channel
www.infraredbook.com
MY HOME BASE
South West Victoria
Australia
I acknowledge the Gundijtmara people, the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I live, work & photograph. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. I recognise the continuous connection of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to land, water and Country.