Category Archives: Travel

New England, IBM and the Architecture of I.M.Pei

By Chris | Published May 7, 2013

A trip to New York a couple of weeks ago brought surprises on many different levels. Firstly a reunion with an old school friend I had not seen for forty years, secondly a night in a hotel that put Alan Partridge to shame and thirdly a close up look at the architecture of I.M. Pei in the shape(s) of the IBM site at Somers NY.

To begin at the beginning, as regular readers will have realised, I’m on something of a world tour, beginning last October I’ve visited China, India (twice), France, Spain (three times), and now America. Some of this has been work; I’m involved in Communications Skills training with IBM and have been delivering a course to members of the IBM Academy, the future technical leaders of the company. The trip to New York came hard on the heels of a trip to India and my rudimentary preparation involved using the IBM chosen travel agent to book my hotel, car and flights.

Arriving in New York, I headed straight for the Hertz desk to collect my car, only to discover there was no sat nav available. A couple of minutes of negotiation secured an upgrade to a premium class, 4 wheel drive, fully automatic Mercedes in glistening white, with Sat Nav installed. I’d never driven an automatic before and more to the point, never driven in NYC before. Unwitting, I set off to recreate my very own “Bonfire of the Vanities”. Leaving JFK, I quickly became lost and hurtled into the Bronx, a neighbourhood of legendary delinquency. Cruising the streets of this neighbourhood proved disappointingly normal – no angry mobs gathered to torch my vehicle, no gunfights were observed and there was not a siren to be heard. I used the opportunity merely to familiarise myself with the sat nav and the automatic transmission and very soon found my way back onto the highway.

Seventy miles north of New York City is a place called Somers, a tiny New England town, that hosts one of IBM’s many office complexes and research labs. The buildings appear from the highway to float amongst the trees, and it was not until the next day that I was able to get close to this self advertised “futuristic fortress”.

First I was to navigate to Dansbury, Connecticut where my hotel was situated. I’d chosen the hotel on the basis of being out in the woods and towns of New England which I was keen to photograph, yet close enough to commute to Somers where I was going to be working.

Inevitably, nothing went according to plan. I arrived at the Hotel to find a JCB digging up the car park and inside, a fine layer of plaster dust covering the dust sheets that were draped over every stick of furniture in reception. Something told me this was not going to be a long stay. I checked in and made my way to my room, which featured a microwave cooker, a coffee machine with no coffee to be seen and a view right onto the building site behind the hotel. Alan Partridge would have been ecstatic, I was exhausted and unimpressed. I decided to post a satirical rant on Facebook and turn in for the night. Five minutes after posting I got a message from my old school friend Dana Wiehl, who, it turned out, lived only ten miles from Dansbury in a house with a spare room! The power of social media knows no bounds. I moved to Bridgewater and stayed the rest of the week. Wonderful to find out about old friends and to catch up after so long.

The next morning, I set off for Somers and the IBM complex. I’d seen the buildings from the road, but close up they are astounding. Like a scene from a science fiction movie, this site is nothing less than inspirational. There are four buildings in a 730 acre estate, each building is triangular and topped with a glass pyramid. Arriving early in the morning, there was not a human being to be seen, and I was able to roam the estate photographing the buildings from a variety of angles. Extraordinary architecture, designed by I. M. Pei. To my untrained eye this is the finest example of modernist architecture I’ve seen. An absolute joy to be around. I was fortunate to get the most fantastic light, which really shows these buildings off to their best.

Inside, with the exception of the glass pyramid the buildings are disappointingly corporate, but I suppose reality has to impact at some point. I’ve never looked forward so much to going to work as I did at this location, and that is in large part down to the vision of the architect and the boldness of the commission. Hats off to all concerned. The course I should say was also a pleasure. A great bunch of people (as they have been all over the world) and an experience perhaps summarised best by the feedback from one of the attendees, delivered in that inimitable New York style: “A life changing experience, but hey..we’ve gotta get you a new hairdresser!”

The collection of pictures from IBM Somers can be viewed here: http://electricalimage.com/galleries/architecture/

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Road Trip to Mysore

By Chris | Published April 15, 2013

MysoreI didn’t get the chance to take photographs the last time I visited Bangalore. My mistake. This time I set aside time to get outside of the IT capital of India and explore the countryside.

I booked a car for the day and at 7am set off for Mysore with the intention of taking in the bird sanctuary at Ranganathittu, the Sultan’s palace at Mysore and the Chamundi Hills from which the view of the plains is utterly breathtaking.

Needless to say, virtually nothing went according to plan. The drive, 90 miles or so to Mysore was tortuous, however once we got to the bird sanctuary, things took a sharp turn for the better. As ever in India, there was a fee to pay at the gate, followed by a further negotiation with the owner of a small rowing boat, which seemed like a better way to go than the tourist boats that chug remorselessly around the reserve, frightening the wildlife.

Once in the boat, we seemed perilously close to the water and when the owner produced a pair of oars that might have been designed by Heath Robinson, I wondered just how much of the lake we would see. I needn’t have worried. Applying himself manfully to the oars, we shot across the water, virtually silently and I was able to get close enough to the wildlife to take decent photographs. Now I’ve never been a wildlife photographer, but I’d anticipated that exposure was going to be a problem with so much water and such a clear day. I set up the camera to warn of any overexposed areas in playback, so I was quick to realise that even using Aperture Priority, the camera was getting it wrong to the tune of 2 stops. Once I’d added exposure composition to the mix (-2), I got some excellent shots, at least for a beginner!

Crocodile!

Taking pictures of Pelicans and so on was fascinating, but when I glanced across at the guide, I was startled to see the look of a man who had just seen a ghost. I followed his gaze and to my surprise, found myself staring at a very large and very bad tempered crocodile, making straight for the boat. At speed. The animal must have been at least ten foot long, possibly more and it was clear that our best interests were not uppermost in its mind! All hands to the oars and thankfully, we began to pull away from the animal. Eventually it gave up the chase and turned disdainfully away, gradually sinking under the water. We saw at least a dozen crocodiles that morning, but none of them as big and none at quite such close quarters.

Once the excitement of the bird sanctuary had subsided we took off for Mysore. The home of the Tippu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore and implacable opponent of the East India Company. I visited the summer palace which was spectacularly decorated and featured period prints by British military artists depicting the four Anglo-Mysore wars. He died in battle, during the fourth war, defending the fort of Srirangapatna.

The Sultan's Palace, Mysore

The Sultan’s Palace, Mysore

The next stop was the Maharajah’s Palace at Mysore. Still occupied, this was beyond spectacular. Every religious festival, the palace is illuminated at 7pm. I got there around 6pm and took photographs from various vantage points and then realised I was simply recreating the popular postcard views. Searching for a better, or at least less overexposed angle, I slipped through the crowd barriers and gained access to the side, just before the lights were switched on. Basically, as you can see form the photograph, this place can probably be seen from space!

Back to Bangalore, after 15 hours and 350 photographs, the next morning I decided to try and catch some of the life of the city and arranged with my driver to be dropped off at the City Market.

The City Market is home to a Mosque and is a tumultuous melting pot of humanity, beggars, travellers, merchants, it is a real bustling street market and I was glad that I went. Cattle roamed nonchalantly through the crowds as ignored as the beggars, of which there were many.

City Market, Bangalore

City Market, Bangalore

I’m pretty sure I was the only anglo in the market that day and felt quite conspicuous with my camera. I’d set it on aperture priority – the hustle was so intense, there was no way I’d have time to fiddle with settings and it turned out to be a good decision, but perhaps not as good as if I’d set it on fully automatic.  I’m used to setting up my shots very deliberately but that was never going to work here.

I realised I was going to attract a lot of attention if I lingered for long in the same spot, so I had to simply walk through the market, firing off shots and hoping for the best. Mixed results it’s fair to say. I used a wide aperture as there was a lot of shadow, but my depth of field was too narrow and as a result I ‘lost’ a good many potentially usable shots. A narrower aperture to mitigate against loss of focus might have done the trick. As it was, several shots were soft in crtitical areas which was disappointing but I guess that’s the attraction of street photography. It’s not a perfect art and the frustration at realising a good scene has been ineffectively recorded is part of the learning.

Ugadi Festival

Ugadi Festival

My visit to India coincided with the Ugadi Festival, so not for the first time I felt very privileged to be able to take photographs. Ugadi Festival is basically New Years Day, I anticipated huge crowds, but actually that wasn’t the case at all. People were very friendly and mostly just ignored me and my camera. The one place I did attract attention was at the Maharajah’s Palace, but that was from other photographers who wanted to understand what I was doing using LiveView to get focus.

Using LiveView is something I’ve grown accustomed to in landscape photography and especially at the Palace it was the only way to go – selective magnification allowed me set focus exactly where I needed it to be i.e., where it makes sense in the final image. It was invaluable in helping to get the crispest possible focus here, as the lights were so intense and I needed pick out some fine details in the Palace exterior.

The photographs will appear in due course in the India section of the Landscape & Travel section of the site. In the meantime, I’m packing for New York. It never rains…

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Ten Days in Andalusia

By Chris | Published March 27, 2013

Ten days in Andalusia, combining house hunting with photography. This time we more or less got the balance right and the photographs can be seen here and of the house hunting, more will be revealed later. Big plans. Suffice to say, third time lucky? I hope so!

We started the trip at Malaga airport where our hire car turned out to be a tiny Fiat 500, bright red with gorgeous retro styling inside. No problem finding that vehicle in a crowded car park!

The first leg of the trip was to Alhama de Granada where we stayed at the Hotel la Seguiriya, run by retired flamenco singer Paco Moyano. A lovely old townhouse with views over the gorge, a very welcoming host and the most beautiful, unspoiled town in Granada. The town dates from pre Roman times and boasts a hot spring within walking distance of the old town and an original Hamam a short drive away. The Hamam can also be accessed via a mile and a half walk through the most spectacular gorge, featuring a disused mill and an ancient hermitage carved into the cliff side. The old town boasts many outstanding tapas bars including one where they heat the place by shovelling burning coals underneath the tables in the bar!

From Alhama, we drove to Granada where we stayed at the Almunia del Valle, high up above the town in Monachil, where we ate the most amazing meal of the trip. The next day we anxiously checked weather forecasts in preparation for a drive across the Sierra Nevada to Mairena. The forecasts were good and the road was open so we set off, the Fiat groaning a bit at the hills, but reasonably confident of a fair crossing. This confidence dwindled dramatically as we got higher and the weather got worse. We saw by turn, rain, sleet, snow and impenetrable clouds before we got to the top and began the more gentle descent into Mairena. Only after we arrived did we discover a text from our hosts, Emma and David advising us not to attempt the drive as temperatures were plummeting and the steep roads become icy and very dangerous!

Sunset in Mairena

Sunset in Mairena

Emma and David run the Casa Rural las Chimeneas, an organic farm with several Casitas for the guests. They host yoga and walking holidays and author Chris Stewart of “Walking over Lemons” fame hosts a writing workshop there every summer. A delicious dinner was served in their restaurant and we got a personal guided tour not only of their farm, but of the olive press that gives them their olive oil and is run as a co-op to service the needs of the local community. Fabulous views from the village and some excellent walks available for every type of walker. Emma and David are very passionate about the community they live in and as a result enjoy the respect of the locals. The trend in the mountain villages has been downwards for years now, but the recession is beginning to drive younger folk back to their parents, bringing with them new, modern ideas about farming, so we may yet see some regeneration of these beautiful places. One idea that is not so popular is the trend for industrial scale greenhouses where vegetables are grown hydroponically, producing vast quantities of tasteless, chemical infused produce that undercuts the local farmers.

Olive in Andalusia

We travelled West after this part of the journey to Orgiva, a town that nestles in the fertile low Alpajurras, providing a gateway to the mountain villages and Granada from the South. Orgiva is a bustling working town with a large english ex-pat community. It has outstanding landscapes, to both North and South and appears to have its own ecosystem – the weather here was the equivalent of August in the UK!

From Orgiva we travelled back to Alhama de Granada for another look at the Arab Quarter, where I discovered the story of Elena de Cespedes, born a woman in the 15th century and later in life declared a man, married as a man and eventually tried and sentenced to 200 lashes and ten years working as a nurse in a prison hospital for the crimes of witchcraft, heresy and apostasy. Every year there is a cross dressing festival in her memory.

This was the last stop of the tour, we drove to Malaga and a flight home. I’d recommend any and all of these places as holiday destinations, we had a truly wonderful break where we met some delightful people who we will definitely be seeing again.

Pictures can be found in the Gallery under Landscape & Travel / Spain. Or click here!

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A Week in Barcelona

By Chris | Published February 3, 2013

Photographing Barcelona is a tall order, particularly if time is limited and daylight is mostly spent inside one of the most brutal conference centres I’ve ever had the misfortune to visit.

I haven’t really scratched the surface with this collection, but it has convinced me to go back and keep going back until I know the city well enough. My impressions are many and varied, there is architecture ranging from the extraordinary Sagrada Familia, designed by Antoni Gaudi, a gothic modernist masterpiece that for my money ranks as one of the most spectacular buildings I’ve ever seen. There is the brutalist modernity of the university district, typified by the hotel I stayed in, Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I. Be aware that this is primarily a conference hotel and looks and behaves like one. Impersonal, spectacular and brutal. Consumed one of the most disgusting hamburgers I’ve ever eaten and one of the nicest omelettes. Go figure.

The first evening was probably the best from the photographic perspective. I had decided to only take the Canon G1 X on the trip, a decision I didn’t regret since it is light and inconspicuous. I hightailed it to the Ramblas, Barcelona’s equivalent of Piccadilly, a street that is essentially pedestrian, lined with shops, bars and cafes, where people stroll, photographers photograph and life just carries on. The prices are high, but off the main drag, there are lots of cheaper, more friendly places to linger.

The harbour is well worth visiting. Avoid the shopping centre style area and head for the older parts which in January are much quieter and more interesting. I finally broke free of my conference on the Friday and headed downtown to photograph the Gaudi Cathedral. It is as wonderful as it is famous, but four blocks to the north east there is the Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau – a fabulous building designed by another of the Catalan modernists, Lluis Domenech i Montanet. Not quite as breathtaking as Sagrada Familia, but definitely in the same league. It is being restored at the moment and the site is inaccessible, but can still be viewed from the road and well worth the 15 minute walk to get there.

The whole collection of photographs from Barcelona can be viewed here. (http://electricalimage.com/galleries/travel/spain/barcelona/)

 

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Paul Strand – Tir A’Mhurain: The Outer Hebrides

By Chris | Published January 21, 2013

Paul Strand was an American photographer and film maker whose work I was only vaguely familiar with, as one of a number of modernist photographers who helped establish the form in the United States during the mid 20th Century. That was before I discovered this book and the fascinating story behind it.

Strand was a Marxist connected to, though apparently never a member of, the Communist Party and through his work with a company called Frontier Films fell foul of the McCarthy regime and found himself branded as “un-american” and “subversive”. Never a man to shirk a fight, his response was to insist on having his work printed in Eastern Germany on the pretext that the print process could only be found in the Eastern Bloc.

He arrived in Scotland, with the FBI in close attendance, at the same time as the American military began surveying the island of South Uist in the Hebrides to see if it were suitable to host a long range missile site. That the project should yield one of the definitive documents of the Hebridean way of life and perhaps the definitive work of Scottish photography is extraordinary under the circumstances.

Written in collaboration with Basil Davidson, the book contains a set of monochrome photographs that span portraiture, landscape and documentary in the main, supplemented with textures of stone and sky, thatched roofs and reeds. As an impression of that bleak landscape, I’ve never seen better, indeed never seen anything even approaching this standard.

Although the book is a political project it is not overtly political. It tells a story, the story of the islanders, of their values and relationship with the land and the sea, with work and the weather. In so doing, Strand asserts that the islanders are and continue to be a viable community, not to be ruthlessly ignored and exploited for political gain.

I love this book, both for the writing and the photography. It is an extraordinary achievement for an outsider to capture so accurately the soul of a community, but capture it he did. He tells the story of these islands in the hope that they might be left alone. In fact, the book was immediately banned in the USA and the rocket ranges are still there, under the management of corporations supplying the defence industry.

In somewhat prescient fashion, the book ends with the following quote: “A comic mythology sometimes found elsewhere has liked to paint the Hebrideans as pawky spongers on the governmental purse, preferring charity to fending for themselves…” Sound familiar?

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A Day Out In Delhi

By Chris | Published November 3, 2012
Sweeping leaves at the Red Fort

Sweeping the Red Fort

I’ve always wanted to visit India and finally got my chance to go to Delhi at the end of October. I’m absolutely loving it here, the post monsoon weather is cooler than usual, about the temperature of a hot summer day in the UK which is bearable. Tomorrow I’m going to the markets in Old Delhi to try and capture some of the hustle and bustle of this extraordinary town. It will be my last chance because I’m flying down to Bangalore in the evening.

I thought I’d offer some sage advice at this stage to anyone thinking of visiting Delhi with an expensive camera. Delhi makes a big impression. I walked out of the airport at 5am local time to be confronted with a sea of faces, taxi drivers touting for trade. The noise and the smell struck me like a wall. Pollution is a major problem and the air is heavy with it. The modus operandi of drivers in Delhi is to ignore the concept of lanes, right of way, personal safety etc and go hell for leather into any possible gap. Oh yes, the horn is used all the time. It’s bedlam out there!

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best, even only, way to photograph any city is to walk. There’s no getting around it, you have to be on the ground to see the opportunities. Delhi is huge, and some areas, trust me, you just don’t want to visit, so walking is difficult because the ‘must see’ sites are pretty distributed. There is a bus service, though god knows where it goes and why. The subway is a good option, cheap and much calmer than the streets, but coverage is incomplete. I decided, on the back of my time being substantially reduced, to hire a driver with a car. The cost was less than £20 a day. Watch out though, the hotel tried to charge me £40.

A car cannot navigate the back streets of old Delhi, so I arranged to meet my driver at various spots. He would drive me to where I wanted to go, I’d go off for a couple of hours and take pictures, phone him and he’d come and pick me up. Worked like a dream. The only downside was that hanging around makes you a sitting target for touts, beggars and thieves. Watch your personal space and ignore the beggars!

The other tips I’d mention are equipment related. I use a Kata 3n1 bag to carry my kit. They are tough, pretty secure and can be worn at front or back, sling style or rucksack. Easy for you to get at the camera, not so easy for anyone else. Tripods are not allowed at some locations, I had to use all my powers of persuasion to get into Humayun’s Tomb, and because of the pollution the sky is a uniform grey colour. Not much point taking ND Filters, there are no clouds visible.

For all this, Delhi is by some distance the most exciting city I’ve ever visited – the squalor, the ramshackle buildings – people flying around on motorbikes and scooters, the noise is unbelievable! And quite intimidating at first – give it a go, its an essential, life affirming experience.

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A Week in Las Alpajurras

By Chris | Published October 15, 2012

Girl Reading in Capileira

Las Alpajurras is a region of spain I’ve wanted to visit for years. Situated on the edge of the Sierra Nevada national park, it has some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. I based myself in Orviga, a small town at the base of the mountains with good access to the white villages of Capileira, Canar and Bubion and the Moorish town of Lanjeron.

I got lucky with the weather, blazing hot sun for five of the seven days I was there. I took a great many photographs without really having a theme, the landscapes came off best, but I have some ideas ready for when I return – this region of spain is teeming with wildlife and the farming methods in the mountains are thankfully not particularly modern. People routinely live over the age of 100 apparently and I’d like to capture the spirit of this wonderful country on camera.

This was the first time I’ve used a Canon 5D Full frame camera, so I can’t really write about this trip without raving about the technology. I got my hands on the new Mk III for the trip and have been frankly blown away. I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of this camera’s abilities, but things that impressed me mightily were the AF point selection – the camera supports 26 AF assist points which gives so much more precision to the business of focussing. The picture above is a radical crop of a shot I took from about 75 metres away from the subject. The focus point was on the head. The combination of the 10.1 megapixel sensor and the extended AF points meant I was able to put the focus precisely where I wanted it and have pixels to spare even after such a radical crop.

I also loved the speed at which this camera focuses – in combination with an “L” series lens I found myself checking a couple of times to see if autofocus was switched on. Very impressive.

Dusk at Las Barracas

This picture is my favourite from the trip – yes, it is an HDR shot, but it is very close to the idea I had when I shot the three pictures it is made up from. I exposed first of all for the Sky and then for the mountains in the middle and finally the foreground. I was after the layers and as a technical challenge, trying to get the dynamic range or richness of a picture shot with film. Don’t know if I succeeded in that, but I do like this image!

I used Nik HDR Pro to do the HDR conversion and then tweaked it in Lightroom. I like Nik software a lot – it works well with Lightroom and is so intuitive to use.

I’ll be returning to Andalucia, hopefully in November for a few days, and will be spending less time on business and more on photography.

So, Las Alpajurras and a Canon 5D – what could possibly go wrong? ! I must admit, I love this part of the world and this trip has fired my imagination with a vengeance. There’s a lot to photograph and a lot to explore, I plan to go back many times in the next few years and see if I can do the place justice. Here’s hoping!

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Travels in Beijing

By Chris | Published September 2, 2012

Three days photographing Beijing was an opportunity i was never going to pass up. So I flew over to China last weekend, slept on Sunday, worked on Monday & Tuesday and spent the rest of the week grabbing as many photographs as possible.

Beijing is an incredible city, extreme in every sense, architecturally especially. The scale is breathtaking, an urban sprawl bigger than London and much more densely populated, it is strange and exciting and I had a wonderful time there.

I managed to get around the places I would never have forgiven myself for not photographing. The Great Wall is truly breathtaking, the Ming tombs extraordinary and the Forbidden City easily lives up to its reputation. One place I was not familiar with before the trip was the 798 Space, a converted factory from the bad old days, designed by East German architects, based on Bauhaus designs in the 1930′s. It is well worth a visit.The Worker’s Stadium is another impressive monument from the communist days, with it’s iconic statue and slogans extolling the virtues of work. China is a country that I suspect is misunderstood. In the west we have a view distorted by the prism of American foreign policy; the jobs are going to China, cheap Chinese goods are undermining our economies etc. In fact China is the second biggest economy in the world and probably the most robust. The financial crash that crippled the west was self inflicted and has impacted China too.

I digress, what did I learn about photography on this expedition? A lot as it happens. My trip to Tiananmen Square was blighted by extreme humidity – so much water in the air that visibility was down to about fifty yards. Hardly ideal for landscape photography. The glare from the sky was overwhelming. I underexposed all the external shots from that day with a view to capturing the detail so that I could bring it up selectively in post processing. Worked a treat. I could have used ND Grads, but there was no feature in the sky, just an endless expanse of grey. I’ve brought a lot of those images to life with monochrome treatments performed in Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro. I took a lot of detail shots inside the Forbidden City and here the 50mm f/1.8 really excelled. Such a great lens. Sharp as a tack.

The Great Wall was a challenge in every way, 35 degree heat and 70 degree inclines do not make a good combination, especially when combined with a backpack full of camera gear. I was grateful for my Lee Polarising Filter and the tripod was a life saver – I used a long lens for most of the shots, to bring the architectural features into a more compact frame. The challenge with photographing a wall in the middle of the day in high summer is that although the scale is immense, a wall surrounded by green is not in itself particularly interesting. It would have been better to have gone in the early morning and captured the mist rolling off the hills, but I couldn’t organise a driver in time and that would also have meant climbing up to the wall on foot! The cable car took minutes, easily an hour’s climb on foot.

The kit I took with me was just about right for the trip, everything got used, it wasn’t too heavy (one day I walked at least 15 miles), the Kata back pack was comfortable durable, in fact the only hint of trouble came when the West German Security asked me if I’d bought it all in China. In fact Canon kit is just as expensive there as it is here, and I’ve never encountered a fake 7D!

I took two cameras – Canon 7D and G1-X. Lee Hard and Soft Grads, Polarising Filter and Big Stopper. My everyday lens, the 17-55mm, a 50mm prime and a 10-22mm wide angle plus the 70-300mm zoom. The Giottos Vitruvian tripod really earned its keep, very light and small when folded. Virtually no wind, so stability was never an issue. I was a little concerned I’d taken too much, and very concerned about the fragility of the filters, but as I said, everything got used and nothing was wasted.

Check out the images from the trip here: http://electricalimage.com/galleries/travel/china-2/

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Iceland – or How Not To Photograph the Northern Lights

By Chris | Published January 8, 2012

I’m just back from a short trip to Iceland, possibly the most amazing country I’ve ever visited! Outside of Reykjavik, conditions were hostile. Temperatures of -5C dropping to -10C at night with a windchill factor that threatens to strip the skin from your bones. Magnificent, outrageous landscapes take the breath away, its a landscape photographers dream.

The most useful thing I learned, embarrassingly was the thing that prevented me from photographing the most vivid display of the Northern Lights I’ve seen in five separate sightings (Alaska, Finland and Canada providing the other venues). The thing about the Northern Lights is….they don’t last. It is dark, probably windy and very very cold.

I prepared diligently, composing my shot (of photographers shooting the lights), setting up the camera in advance with a wide angle lens mounted on the tripod, remote trigger attached. Exposure set to “bulb mode” so that I could take long exposures. The idea was to pick up the whole kit, set the tripod and start taking pictures.

At first everything went according to plan. The hotel called me at first sight of the lights and accompanied by half a dozen other photographers I rushed outside, planted the tripod and waited for the other photographers to take up positions. The wind had taken the temperature down to what felt like -20C, seriously cold, and when I pressed the trigger to open the shutter….nothing happened. I then made the cardinal error – in a panic, I carried the camera indoors so that I could check the set up – immediately the lens and LCD screen misted over. Disaster.

So my top tips for successfully photographing the Northern Lights are these.

1. Prepare kit beforehand – you’ll have a couple of minutes of good shooting conditions if you’re very lucky.
2. Most DSLR’s won’t expose for longer than 30 seconds without being set to “bulb mode”, when the first action opens the shutter and the second closes it. Details will be different depending on what camera you have. My Canon displays a timer on the LCD when the shutter is opened on first click.
3. Choose a moderately high ISO – 800 or so – my problem was caused by there not being enough light to register at ISO 100. Schoolboy error.
4. Choose a mid range Aperture value – you want the light, but you don’t want a narrow depth of field if you want to put some context like a building or in my case other photographers in sharp silhouette.
5. Take as many shots as you have time for at different ISO settings and duration. This is pure guesswork, you won’t have time to inspect the results.

Good luck!

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