Technical Difficulties

Final night in Yellowknife. Best aurora yet. First night with camera problems. Obviously.

It was an early display last night, without the interim between the weak and strong displays that I had noticed two nights ago. My complimentary hot chocolate was interrupted by the announcement that the aurora was increasing in intensity, so I was already flustered as I tried to navigate the teepee flap with the tripod. Looking over the frozen lake in front of me I could see several distinct ribbons of light visibly dancing, where mere minutes before had only been a dull haze. Knowing that sometimes the lights can last as little as five minutes, I hustled over to the spot my dad secured on the lake and began setting up the tripod. I had been outside just a few minutes before, trying to photography the early aurora, so the metal was frozen and sticking. After struggling with the legs, I went to mount the camera, and the dang thing would not click into the base.

If I was flustered before I was basically frantic now. Around me I could hear the “Oww’s” and “Ahh’s” of the other guests at the Aurora Village whom I could not see, as night turned us all into black masses. Finally, I managed to get it secured, and with a sign of relief, I turned the lens to the tree line and composed a shot. By this point, the entire sky was ablaze with undulating green bands. Again, we had the privilege to be directly under a portion of the ribbon, but this time two ends flared out in either direction so you could trace the path of the lights from beginning to end. With all the settings adjusted, I pressed the shutter button halfway down and waited for the telltale hum of the auto-focus adjusting to the focal point.

Nothing. No movement. Frustration turned to desperation.

It was the coldest night that I had attempted to use the camera, and as I figured out later, the lens had stopped registering distances as the metal froze. Thinking that this may have been the problem, I dismantled the whole camera and stuck it beneath both of my jackets in an attempt to warm it before the lights faded away. The cold metal dropped my core temperature faster than I would have thought possible, so I quickly gave up that idea, and remounted the camera in a last ditch effort to get a few shots off before it was too late. For reasons still unknown to me, everything came together at that moment, and I took some pictures where the whole sky is full of clearly dynamic green ribbons.

All in all, I was able to get a few pictures that I would have been proud to share. Except, when I went to upload them to this post, I realized that they were all too big. I was experimenting with a higher ISO setting, and it made the images too large for this site to handle. What I could upload is actually a pretty neat picture of the Aurora Village backlit by the rising moon. Though it’s not the most breathtaking image of the night, it is a good representation of the beautiful landscape under which I experienced the aurora on my last night in Yellowknife.