Slogging through waist-deep snow, he saw the lights overhead, emerald ribbons dangling on the horizon. “It was going to be a fantastic night,” the photographer, Nicholas Narog, 35, told The Epoch Times. “But it kept getting better and better, and eventually the lights were over my head.”
An accountant by day, Narog, from Minneapolis, knew he had to work the next morning, so he would stay out a couple of hours past midnight and end up snapping some 7,500 images of aurora borealis. The northern lights can be an “almost life-changing experience,” he said. “Seeing the colors come across the sky in waves and bands of lights, and especially as a photographer, it’s very exciting to be able to look at the back of the camera.”
Until recently, Narog felt he wasn’t having nearly as many adventures as he would have liked. Snapping local Minneapolis Renaissance Festival photos on the side, what he really wanted was “to get out into the world and just have experiences,” he said. “Ever since I started doing that, I’ve had so many great memories of being outside, being out there in the cold, and being out there in the dark, and doing things I never would have thought to do, if I wasn’t out there doing photography.”
He recently returned from an Alaskan photography expedition, which “was an incredible experience,” he said. “Actually, I still have the effects of frostbite in my hand.” Next year, Narog is planning to visit Iceland, should everything line up.
On this particular day, March 23, the perfect solar wind conditions—determined by the sun’s weather—held out until evening to Narog’s relief and he ventured three-and-a-half hours north past Duluth to Boulder Lake, arriving just before sunset. He wouldn’t be disappointed.
Wielding three cameras, he made a kind of video using a technique of taking time-lapses. With ample foreground opportunities on a north-facing shore, he saw in the blue sky “bands of green lights all around” and, “surprisingly, lots of purple and red, which is not too common.” At one point, he even spotted, what seemed to him, an “angel in the sky.”
The layman might not know, “but the human eye is actually very poor at seeing colors at nighttime,” Narog said, speaking of auroras. “The camera can do longer exposures and pick up more light.” The product is an almost flaming medley of hues that wasn’t possible prior to the advent of digital photography.
Throughout the excursion, Narog wasn’t alone. For equally stuck in the snow up to their waists were several other aurora hunters nearby. And equally overcome by the celestial medley, they “jumped for joy,” knowing this was a none-too-common thing.
Friends Read Free