A night I will never forget

Like many people, the northern lights are something of a wonder to me and is a phenomenon I have been wanting to see for years. Back in 2021, for my birthday, Tim even sent us on holiday to Iceland to try and get a glimpse of them, and they eluded us there as well. (To be fair, everything eluded us there! All our tours were cancelled due to bad weather, and we spent 3 days walking around Reykjavík, which was lovely, but a bit disappointing).

As someone who is active on social media, I have seen many, many photos of the aurora over the UK, and despite having an absolutely amazing app - My Aurora Forecast & Alerts, I was let down time and time again, mostly by cloud, not being far enough north or quite commonly, sleeping through the alerts going off after I am in bed.

This all changed on Friday 10th May 2024, where the UK was hit by an incredibly rare (I saw one statistic saying it was a 1 in 30 year event) G5 geomagnetic storm causing issues with radios, but more importantly, give us a huge potential for an aurora encounter right here in the UK!

Now, all the apps are different, but this is what my map looked like from the My Aurora Forecast app! We were in the orange section with a 30-49% chance of seeing the aurora, so long as the skies stayed clear.

I had already gone out earlier in the evening with my camera to get some images of Skylar amongst the bluebells and didn’t get the alert on my phone until around 830 pm. Not having seen the lights before, I as not sure what to expect, so once it was dark enough at around 1045pm, I headed to the garden to have a look, I couldn’t really see anything but figured I’d set the camera up and see if that could see anything, as their sensors are much more sensitive to the light than our eyes.

Having set up my camera on the tripod, I turned it on and oh my goodness, everything was GREEN! It was absolutely amazing, I rang Tim up as he was in Scotland and literally repeated over and over, ‘it’s green! Everything is green!’. Have got a few shots from the garden, I grabbed all my gear, and Skylar and headed out on a nighttime adventure.

Where it started from the garden…

I knew that Tim’s sister-in-law was on the top of the Bala road in the Berwyn mountains with her lad, so headed in that direction. The drive over was absolutely amazing, and you were able to clearly see the reds in the sky, as well as paler greens and purples. I knew there was a spot that I wanted to stop off at on the way up the hill, and was crossing everything that the pull in would be clear, and it was!

I set up my equipment and started photographing. Now in all honesty, I was way too excited and was not really paying attention to my compositions as much as I should have been and once seeing these images in Lightroom, didn’t like any of them! I also messed up a few images by switching from photo to video and not remembering that Sony cameras will not keep manual focus locked between settings if it is just set in camera and not on the lens switch - luckily, I did realise this and rectified the situation moving forward.

Having got some images, I got back in the car and continued up the hill. Tim’s sister-in-law had gone home at this point so we didn’t get to meet up, but I did find another pull in which was quiet. The ones right at the top were absolutely chock-a-block, and there were was one idiot parked on the inside bend of a corner in the road! Another car did pull in after seeing me there which, I will admit at the time, I was not impressed about, especially as they didn’t turn off their headlights, however, after suggesting they would see the lights better with them off they turned them off, and we had a lovely chat about how exciting it all was.

The aurora here was stunning greens and purples, and you could clearly see the lights moving and changing with your eyes. I decided that I wanted to get an image of me and Skylar, having dragger her out with me and this was where I was very thankful for my new friends arriving, as they were able to press the shutter button for me. I am so happy with how this image came out, with the crescent moon in the image as well as the stunning array of lights on show. No it is in no way perfect and I fell like I should have stood off to the right of this image more than I am, but when it’s dark (even with a head torch) and you are wading through knee-high shrubs, it is hard to compose! I already know what I want to do if I ever get another chance, I did try this laster on but was unable to find ground where I could be silhouetted with Skylar and have the aurora in the sky above us, however, I now have a new goal to try and achieve! As a thank you to the couple, I also got an image of them and emailed it over once I had edited it so they can enjoy and remember the amazing events of this night.

At the top of the Bala road, holding my bestie so she could be in the image as well 😂

They headed off, and left me to my own devices, where I remembered I could use interval mode on my camera and give myself more time to get in frame, rather than rushing around with the 10-second timer (even though I set it to do 5 shots). I got one more image of us here that I was happy with, then decided to head back into the village of Llangynog and Revolution Bike Park (the business that Tim owns and runs with his brother) as when else would I be able to capture and image of the aurora so strong over them?

As I don’t have a 4X4, I parked at the bottom and walked up to my first location for shots, unfortunately, the composition was not as strong as I wanted so headed up to the top of the quarry. As my widest lens is the 24-70 f2.8 GM ii. I wasn’t able to capture the whole scene as I saw it, so I ended up creating a panoramic image with 7 (I think) vertical shots and then used Lightroom to stitch them together.

Panoramic image looking down over Revolution Bike Park, Llangynog

I also managed to get a few more shots, and it was amazing to see how the images changed with the shifting of the lights and the changes in hues. I also got some more of Skylar and me, this time I used multiple exposures at a shutter speed of 10s, to ensure Skylar and I would be bright enough in the image, and then blended us into an image taken at 5 seconds where the lights were more ‘frozen’ when compared to the longer 10 second image.

I eventually got home after 2 am, having the best night of my life and creating some magical memories along the way. I learnt a lot from my time under the aurora and, if I get another chance at some point in the future, I know I will do differently to get better results. That being said, I am very happy with the images I did get, I just know I can do better!