I did get a personal introduction to a local fellow Aurora shooter Mike Isaak.  Mike and I have communicated via Voxer/Email/Facebook but have never met in person.  We were both out shooting on the same night and managed to find each other in the middle of the Alberta prairies.  It was a pleasure to meet and shoot with him.  Check out his imagery, first class!  http://mikeisaak.com/

This is some of the timelaplse I took while we were imaging at the same location.

Here is one more.

Go here http://photos.infocusimagery.com/p850217043 if you want to see the rest from January 24, 2011

This footage was taken just north of Chipman, Alberta.

Hopefully I will be adding some more images/video later this week, as a CME is predicted to hit use on Monday night.  We will see…

Enjoy

ZK

Now the good stuff…

The weekend of September 9/10, 2011 was a fantastic weekend for viewing and photographing the Aurora Borealis.  I started imaging around 8:30pm!!!  The sun had just set and the show began.  I started near Bruderheim, Alberta and migrated north and then east to Andrew/Wellington areas.  Below are a few of the events that took place during this outing.

At this point I have to introduce a fellow photographer that I have been shooting aurora with lately.  His name is Olivier Du Tré. He is a fantastic photographer who’s base location is Cochrane, Alberta.  His website http://www.olivierdutre.com.   He has some truly magnificent images on his website and I encourage you to visit it!  Like myself, he has become, dare I say, addicted to capturing the Aurora Borealis.  We have been communicating via email regarding the last few aurora events that have happened in our area.  We are located about 300km apart from each other so we see very similar things in the sky.  Oddly enough we have only communicated through email so far, but we seem to have developed a great rapport with each other.  He was also out shooting this same event Friday night.  Emails began flying back and forth and the following adventure unfolded.

This is one of my first sequences of the night.  It was around 8:46pm.

Oli emailed me and asked me if I could see anything as he was still at home.  GO MAN GO  was my response while I was operating one of my cameras.

Shortly after this a very large John Deer combine entered the field with the old house on it.  This field had been previously cut and had a few farming implements right next to the access point to the highway.  The driver of the combine drove over to the area with all the implements and began disconnecting a piece equipment off the front of the combine that needed to be removed in order to be properly transported to the next field.  Well… I was standing by my truck with my headlamp on, so the driver could see me, as I was already parked in HIS field.  After about 5 minutes of working on his equipment, he got back into the cab and drove his combine right towards me.  Eight very bright spotlights on a vehicle the size of a house, which is being driven by a complete stranger coming right at me, was a very unnerving experience!  He stopped 5 feet from the front of my truck with the ladder to the cab right in front of me.  The driver motioned me to come up the ladder.  As I climbed halfway up the ladder, I was thinking “I hope this goes ok”.  He asked me “What are you up to tonight?”.  I told him that I was a photographer and then asked if I could have his permission to photograph the old house in his field.  He smiled and said “No problem, but you have to give me hand first.  I need you to guide me while I backup.” “No Problem”, I responded over the loud sound of the engine.  Keep in mind, at this point I was standing on the ladder about 6 feet off the ground, which is right in front of a tractor wheel that is about 8 feet high.  ”Great” he replies, and immediately starts backing up, with me still on the ladder!!!  I am watching this huge wheel spinning around about a foot from my feet thinking I better hang on real good here.  He backs up to about two feet from this trailer and I shout “GOOD”.  He climbs out of the cab and says “Come here, I need to hook this trailer up and I need your help.”  As we walk to back of the combine, I noted the sheer size of this machine.  It was very impressive.  The driver disappears under the back of the combine and started messing around with a the tongue of the trailer.  He tried to lift it onto the hitch but couldn’t quite get it to the right location.  So I climb under and try to help him.  After 3 or 4 tries it’s a NO GO.  So he removes this 1/2 inch pin from the trailer tongue and extends the tongue about an inch and we try it again.  This time it goes. SUCCESS!  He then turns to me and shouts over the engine, “Here!” and hands me the pin.  “I am going to backup about an inch, when I do, put the pin back in the tongue on the trailer.”  He then disappears around the corner of the combine.  An Inch!  This thing is the size of a house, “Ya right!” goes though my head.

OK, just to recap here… I am now under the back of a vehicle which is the size of a house.  It’s being driven by a complete stranger. I’m in the middle of a field, in the darkness of the night with a 1/2 inch trailer pin in my hand.  I’m thinking there is NO way I am going to stay under here!  So I quickly retreat from under the combine to get clear of anything that could kill me!

The engine revs up a bit and the combine moves back and then stops!  I thinking there is no way he got this right on the first try. I quickly climb back under the combine, looking for a fast exit point just in case this thing starts moving again, and insert the pin into the hole. It drops right though to the other side. PERFECT! I climb out from under the back and walk to the front.  I give the driver a “thumbs up”.  He waves at me and drives away.  What a rush!   The loud noise of the combine mellows as it drives away from me on the highway…

OK, back to shooting!  I then took a few more sequences in this field and the hit the road to find a new location.

Ten minutes of driving and I found this place.  I set up and started to take a few images and the sky went crazy!

This was an absolute visual feast for the eyes!  It didn`t last very long but WOW, was it ever bright!  Just then I get an email from Oli, “DID YOU SEE THAT?” with a few very expressive words that I have left out.

I took a lot of images in this location before the activity began to slow down.

On the move again…then more fun and games!

Now I have to give you a bit of history between Oli and I.  The last major aurora event happened when I was visiting the West coast on Pender Island, BC. Oli and I corresponded though a few emails earlier in the day regarding the data indicating a potential show that night.  We both headed out after sunset.  He went to one of his locations and I went to a location I scouted out earlier in the day.  It was down a little cliff onto a small rocky beach.  Unfortunately, I was not able to photograph much aurora because of my southerly location and the enormous amount of light pollution from Vancouver!  While I was trying my best, Oli was sending me all these emails freaking out about the activity he was photographing.  Grrrr!  While reading one of his emails I noticed a small boat on the ocean, about 500 to 600 yards away from me.  Well, it was an RCMP rescue boat doing a routine patrol around the island.  Before I knew it, the boat turned toward me and made a direct beeline at me.  Intense, blinding spotlights were coming at me and lighting up the shoreline.  It all worked out ok after showing the RCMP my website via an iPad.  I’m pretty sure Oli got a good laugh out the email that followed after this episode.

I have been driving around the county side in the middle of the night for years and have never come across any form of police/security etc.  On this September night while sending messages to Oli, guess what… an RCMP set up a road block in the middle of nowhere!  I mean, I am on a gravel road, 40km from any town, and bam!  RCMP flagging me down!  Two cars, two officers.  They approached my truck and asked me what I was doing there!  I explained that I am a photographer taking pictures of the aurora borealis. “Please get out of the vehicle!” is what came next.  I complied, then they asked me to open the rear hatch of my truck. I did.  Flashlights probed the back of my vehicle and stopped on my LowePro camera bag. “Please open that bag!” said one of the officers.  “Sure”, I say.  I wish I had a camera in my hands. The RCMPs jaw just dropped open when I opened the bag and he saw all the gear I had in it.  I grabbed one of cameras that I just used back at the farm and showed them a few images.  At that point the tone of the whole situation changed to a relaxed situation.  They then informed me that there was a party in the area and they were looking for drunk drivers.  I wished them a safe night and drove off into the darkness.  For the record, I am totally blaming my association with Oli for this encounter!  This is two interactions with the RCMP, and the only times this has happened is when Oli happens to be out shooting at the same time as me!

To make me feel a little better Oli had sent me an email indicating I was not the only one having issues unrelated to photography.  Apparently he was being chased down a range road by a pack of Coyotes!

At this point, I headed toward a small lake and setup for another session.  This is what I was shooting.

Shortly after this, Oli got surrounded by three packs of Coyotes and I didn’t hear back from him that night.

Just kidding.  I did however manage to step right into a cow pie!  GREAT!  It was a stinky drive home from that point.

The aurora was subsiding and it was close to 3:00am and I had a good, one and a half hour drive, to get home.  So that was it!

Hope you enjoyed this adventure,  I know I did!

ZK

The project with OASIS involved a new medium of expression for me. In the next couple of weeks I will be linking my website to a number of Aurora videos I have created with time-lapse photography. These videos are going to be used in an upcoming TV program which is all about Aurora Borealis. The program is called Cosmic Vistas II, the episode is called “Night Fire”. Check it out if get a chance.

Here are a few clips…

I have recently added a new section to my website called the VIDEO GALLERY The video below is posted there along with many others. Go check them out!

I will be updating the look of the VIDEO GALLERY in the very near future.

ZK

A couple of days ago I received an email from National Geographic requesting a few images for an article they were doing!  Well a few more emails went back and forth and …

This image ended up here...

Link to Article

and this one ended up here!

Link to Article

Also, on March 10, 2011 NASA posted this image all over their website.  It was used in an artical explaining solar flares! 

How cool is that!  It just goes to show, that sometimes when you follow your passion, and you put the results out there for the world to see, great things can happen!  I really consider these pinnacle achievements with regards to my photography.  I am extremely proud to have my imagery associated with these 2 great organizations and I would like to thank everybody involved that allowed this to take place!

Wow, what a fantastic couple of days!

Later,

ZK

I had a great weekend of chasing the aurora.  The conditions were beautiful and so was the show.  I started off around 10:00pm on Friday night and finally shut it down around 6:00am.  The only reason I stopped taking pictures was the sun began to rise!  I headed out again Saturday night around 8:00pm and shot till 3:00am.  The solar wind that was buffeting earth created a beautiful display that was different than usual, in a couple of ways.  Check out the photos below for examples.

Things started off in a very mellow way. No drama here, just smooth greens!

So while this was going on to the north...

This was going on to the south. This pink/purple band of light appeared very high in the sky. I think its the first time I have pointed my camera south to get an image of the aurora!

Here is a little fisheye fun. Here you can see the purple and the green at the same time!

The aurora was very bright even through the clouds.

This really cool strip of clouds was illuminated by light pollution from Cold Lake. It looks like smoke from a fire or something.

A little fireball was caught in this one.

Ok, this is where things got interesting. As you can see in this photo, the sun is still below the horizon, but its rising. The aurora went nuts! It began to pulse rapidly. If you could have heard it, it would have sounded like wind noise in your car on the highway at speed. Instead of wind buffeting, it really was solar wind buffeting the planet. It was very cool!

The following images are from Satuday night. There was a little sporatic cloud cover, but it added a interesting dynamic to the shots.

Things began to get a little more active by this time. The banding looks great.

This is the last image for this post.  Shortly after this was taken, the aurora retreated into the darkness.  I headed home for some much needed sleep. 

Thanks for stopping in, and have a great day!

ZK

I consider myself extremely fortunate to be located on the other side of this planet from where this disaster continues to take place.  I was also lucky enough to have found some clear sky’s and photograph the first wave of this storm as it hit our atmosphere.

Things started off very slow with a mellow band of Aurora which stretched from the western to eastern horizons.  Even shooting with a full frame 5DmkII and the 15mm fisheye I could not get the entire aurora belt in the frame.

This is the Western horizon.

While this was the Eastern horizon.

This was looking straight up with the 15mm Fisheye lens. As you can see the aurora belt stretches from horizon to horizon.

Within 5 minutes of me stopping to setup for a few quick shots this began to erupt! It really continued to grow!

This shot is a little dark, but the patterns are fantastic!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News031011-xclass.html

Here is another shot where I tried to capture the entire display. I still could not fit all of it in.

A change of location and 20 minutes later the aurora had morphed to lower on the horizon.

 

I found this really cool area where this ridge just pop out of the flat landscape, there also happened to be a flattened barn in the middle of this field too.

Rolling ridge

Now I was bracketing a few shots just to be sure I would be able to get a correct exposure with all of the light and dark areas of this image when all of a sudden…

LUCKY!  I can’t count the number of times I have been setting up my camera gear, or my camera is pointing the wrong way.  The list goes on and on for the number of times that I am usually changing lenses, in between exposures, or I am driving.  REALLY!  I have seen countless numbers of meteors of this magnitude but have never been able to capture one.  It’s a little different when there is a meteor shower on, but this stone was a totally random event and it actually happened while I was exposing too!!!

This beautiful church jumped off the landsacpe. It was so bright with the moon beaming on it.

I then headed into the trees where I found this decaying barn.

Again, the moon was bright enoungh to cast these great shadows!

I then walked along the treeline to get a different perspective.

This last one shows you the windswept field in the foreground.  Can you see the stubble sticking though the snow?

Cheers,

ZK