Aurora borealis over black spruce forest
Finally—a photograph of the Aurora Borealis on borealisimages.ca! (Although, for the record, the title I’ve given these galleries—‘Silvicola borealis Images’—is derived from latin roots, and roughly translates to ‘inhabiting the northern forest’. The prefix ‘silvi’ (or ‘silva’) relates to the forest, as in ‘silviculture’ which is the practice of growing and tending a forest. ‘Borealis’ refers generally to things northern in nature, and is from ‘Boreas’ — the Greek god of the north wind.)
This is definitely the darkest photo that I’ve ever printed, and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out—the print literally felt heavy with ink! On-screen, I could see a little bit of detail still in the spruce trees, but I can’t see any of that in the print yet. We’ll see if viewing it in bright daylight will reveal some of those darkest details, but otherwise I think they look fine as solid silhouettes too.
I took this photo in northern Alberta while doing owl surveys this past spring. It was the first time I’d photographed the northern lights, and it was a lot of fun to try out a whole bunch of different techniques, equipment, and of course, patience… I’ll be doing a round of bat surveys in the next little while, and I hope to get the chance to apply some of what I learned this spring to making more images of these beautiful northern lights.
(Click to enlarge the image—you should be able to see the stars in the full-size image too!)
