Colorado creek and the northern lights in the White Mountains north of Fairbanks. Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L (16mm), 30 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 100, Time: 12:39am, Fist quarter moon.

I spent a few days in the White Mountains National Recreation Area a few weeks ago, just north of Fairbanks. On the final clear night, while hanging out with friends in the warm cabin and enjoying good food after a long day of skiing, the aurora appeared in the sky about midnight. The displays were nothing special, but I geared up and went out to shoot for a while since I had no pictures of this particular cabin. It’s situated about 13 miles from the parking lot, on a pretty good trail system, although snowmachine traffic with the large paddle tracks can make the skiing less desirable. What is not particularly evident in this photo is that I’m waist deep in snow (I didn’t have my snowshoes). I wanted  some of the spruce trees in the foreground, and based on the orientation of the aurora, I needed that angle. The shadows on the tree reveal a pretty strong moonlight, even with a first quarter moon status. The displays never cranked in the hour I was outside, but with a long ski behind me and another one coming in the morning, I gave way to sleep in a nice warm cabin. Due to my low angle, stuck in the snow, and the use of the 16mm focal length, I used a little vertical distortion correction in Ligthroom to correct the severely leaning trees.

Through the process of converting from film to digital, there was a slow development of programs that handled the processing of RAW files. As software developed, the potential for extracting the maximum quality from a RAW file became more easily, and more quickly achieved. I remember dragging the temperature slider in the early version of RAW Canon’s processing program and then waiting for the little spinning icon to resolve a new look. Glad those days are gone.

Today, the process, although not simple, is amazing and relatively easy to use. What has developed along side the photographer’s time in the field is the corresponding understanding of what any given scene can look like with the post production process applied. This is important, since it allows the photographer to really push the boundaries, but still maintain good image quality.

This is true across the board, but certainly evident when photographing the aurora borealis. I’ve frequently received the question about how to process RAW files taken of the aurora, so I’d like to briefly address that here. As a precursor to that however, I’d recommend reading an article I wrote on photographing the northern lights with a digital camera. I moved it from my website to this blog for easier interaction with the readers. The first step is properly setting up your camera with a variety of settings, which I have addressed in that article. The second step is taking that RAW exposure into Lightroom for post production processing.

I shoot in auto white balance mode, not that it matters that much, since this is generally tweaked a little anyway, but it is a good starting point.

Below is an image I took last week, which is pretty good right out of the camera, although a bit warm overall, and kind of flat.

I usually begin from top to bottom in the LR development panel:

• Color Temp: in this case I cooled it slightly from 5450 to 5268
• Tint: This is one of the few times in nature photography that I use the Tint slider. Since green and magenta are two of the most common colors in the aurora displays, you can experiment by a combined use of tint/temperature to achieve the proper look. In this case, I increased tint from 74 to 80.
• Brightness: This affects the midtones and I decreased it from 50 to 20
• Contrast: This will give some punch into the image and I moved it from 25 to 80
• Clarity: A slight amount of 11 adds a little edge definition. Use it gently.
• Vibrance: I prefer this over saturation, almost always with aurora, and a little bit. In this case +9
• Lens Corrections: If you have the LR3, you can take advantage of the Lens Corrections and apply the proper profile correction for your lens which will deal with chromatic aberration and vignetting automatically. However, I find that the auto vignette often needs a little reduction, especially with aurora as the images appear to have over-brightened corners. In some cases, the dark corners can give more focus on the visual shape of the aurora. It just depends on the subject and content of the image. In this case, I reduced vignetting to 93.
• Detail and Noise Reduction: This is a big one, since aurora images are usually taken at high ISO. This frame, taken at 800 ISO, has some noise and grain after all of the above tweaks, especially in the corner areas. There are a number of noise reduction programs out there, but I prefer to keep my images in LR, and work from the digital file so I use LR’s built in Noise Reduction. This involves two settings, for the two respective types of noise: Luminance and Chromatic (or color). In this case I moved the default 50 color to 68 and the Luminance from 0 to 44. You can see the difference below. The application of these values will vary considerably from image to image, so don’t use this as a standard. If the image looks too mushy and smooth, you can try adding in a little grain which is found in the Effects tab.

No color or luminance noise reduction applied

After luminance and color noise reduction

These is more to say on the subject, but that is a little introduction to using LR to process a RAW northern lights photo.

Original capture in RAW before LR adjustments. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm f/1.4L II, 5 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 800.

After processing in LR as noted in the above listed adjustments

Northern lights over spruce trees. Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L, 30 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 1000

At the midway point through March, the daylight is flooding into Alaska’s interior. Further north, there is only a few more weeks of photographic opportunity for the aurora borealis. I hope to get out once or twice more, but by mid April the night sky is very bright up above the arctic circle, my favorite region to photograph the aurora. I took this picture during the recent solar storm that made magic night skies across Alaska. I was scouting out a more pleasing foreground location when the aurora flared up, so while that element is not the strongest, the shape in the sky was striking so I just stopped and shot a few frames.

I spent the last four days in the White Mountains National Recreational Area just north of Fairbanks. Its a trail system that strings together a series of little cabins that make for a magnificent ski, dogsled or snow machine trip. Most of the time was spent skiing and eating, with a tiny bit of aurora borealis photography. There have been some magnificent aurora displays in the last week, and I watched one of the most amazing ones the night before my trip. I enjoyed it without racing for my camera, a pleasant change of pace.

The trail system in the White Mountains is well maintained but as evidenced by the blizzard that hit the Fairbanks area a few weeks ago, and trapped some travelers in the White Mountains, one needs to be prepared for anything. Overflow along the trail can be problematic at times, especially with skis, but we had no problem with that on this journey.

Temperatures ranged between -15 at night to +20 or so during the day, and the warmth of the sun can now be felt on the face–a true sign that spell of winter is breaking in the Alaska’s interior.

The aurora borealis in the early night sky at Caribou Bluff cabin in the White Mountains National Recreational Area. Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L II, 13 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 1000

I’ve been off the grid for a bit while venturing into Alaska’s arctic for a little aurora borealis photography. March can be a great month to shoot the aurora, but temperatures can be cold. It’s been a while since I picked up my camera, and there is a certain series of motions one needs to get reacquainted with when photographing the aurora. Lots of little steps need to be reviewed and it seems that it takes a night to get back in the groove of things. This is all the more important when facing very chilly temperatures, like on my first night. It was minus 12-14 degrees, with a stiff wind out of the north at about 25mph. That equals about -43 degrees with a wind chill factor, and I don’t work near as efficiently at that temperature. Especially when sinking waist deep in snow drifts! On the second night, I fared much better with a little warmer temps, and a review night under my belt. The aurora displays were not quite as dramatic but I got a few keeper frames. The one below was taken at 2:30am this morning (3-7-2011).

Aurora over spruce trees. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm f/1.4L II, 13 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 1000.

Aurora borealis over the Brooks range mountains and the James Dalton Highway, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm f/1.4L II, 8 secs @ f/1.4, ISO 1000

My employee and I are currently undertaking the colossal task of sifting through 40,000 images, removing those which are no longer relevant in the stock photo market, doing QC on keywords, upgrading all digital files to the latest LR3 processing algorithms, and cleaning the hideous dust demons. Did I already say this is a colossal endeavor? While it is painstakingly tedious, and a bit overwhelming, the end result will be a much improved series of files that will be going on a new website hopefully to be launched by the end of the first quarter. Amidst the robotic task, it is a walk down memory lane and I’ve rediscovered some photos well buried in the numerous folders. I thought I’d share one of these aurora shots taken last year. For those who live in Alaska and listen to radio broadcasting, it seems that weekly there are road closure and warning reports issued for various locations along the Dalton Highway (or Haul road). Winter can make for a treacherous drive at times. But in the dark winter skies, imagine cruising down the road with this northern view out your front windshield.

I took this picture at a small turnout, looking north to northeast, which is a common region of the sky where the aurora appear in these northern latitudes. The time was 12:26am in late March, just one of those sleepless nights chasing this magical phenomenon. I can’t remember the exact temperature but I recall somewhere in the vicinity of minus 10 to 20 degrees.

Northern lights over the boreal forest, Fairbanks, Alaska. Canon 5D Mark II, 24mm f/1.4L II, 20 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 1000.

Yesterday morning when I stepped outside about 5:45am, I looked up in the sky-which is always the first thing I do during Alaska’s dark winter mornings–and saw the aurora borealis overhead. So I ran back in my house and quickly grabbed a camera for a token shot. It is really difficult to measure the value of being surrounded by a boreal forest, and having a home tucked away in the beauty of those embracing branches. To show that view from within in a forest, I chose to shoot nearly straight up from the deck of my guest cabin. The purple sky is largely due to light pollution from town reflecting off some hazy cloud layer in the atmosphere. No moon light was present. I shot only two pictures as other things were on the agenda for the day. But this morning view is one of the many reasons I enjoy living in Fairbanks.

There is no lack of top five, top ten, top whatever lists…these days. When making any list or selection, the process is influenced by many factors. I’ve picked a few images, 100 to be exact that were notable to me in some way during the past year. In retrospect, my photography seemed minimized in diversity in 2010, but nevertheless was filled with many great experiences. Here is a little gallery for your enjoyment.

Northern Lights over the Brooks Range, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm f/1.4L II, f/1.4 @ 13 seconds, ISO 800.

Before leaving for another 10 day venture in the arctic, here is one photo taken during my previous trip last week, late one evening when the aurora spilled across the sky. It was taken about 2:00am, in the Brooks Range, on a nearly new moon evening. In retrospect I would have shortened the exposure a little, perhaps from 13 seconds to 8 seconds, which would have frozen the shape a tad more, and the brightness of the aurora could have sustained the reduced time. Bumping the exposure from 800 to 1600 would also reduce time, but I’m a slow convert to the 1600 ISO range, although in can produce some amazingly grain free images. I’ll be seeking for more aurora borealis displays on the second photo tour I’m guiding over the next 10 days.