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So…

It’s been a little while.

I’ve just been living life.

Not a lot going on.

We had Thanksgiving.

My dad broke his leg a few days ago.

Normal stuff.

I have gotten behind on the update videos.

I stopped at August.

We are now about to go into December.

I just haven’t had any motivation to do anything.

I’ve been in this house for four years now.

The excitement has worn off.

Everything has become boring.

I can’t really do much outside because I’m in a packed neighborhood.

They’ll be watching.

Also the job is booming, so I don’t have time to do anything anyways.

It has all become a simple routine.

HOWEVER! Something did finally happen.

Something that caused me to actually DO SOMETHING!

ON TO THE PHOTO!

An eventful week a few weeks ago.

We were going to get hit by a snowstorm.

Below freezing, 8 inches of snow.

Then the auroras were going to happen.

After that, a heat wave.

Temps went up to 65F.

All this happened over 4 days.

The only thing I cared about were the auroras.

We tried a year or two ago to see them, but it didn’t work out that well.

We couldn’t see anything with our eyes, but on my camera there was a faint red glow.

Not that exciting.

This time, however, the solar storm was going to be more extreme.

Like, the most extreme it could be.

We had a chance to see things with our eyes.

So, my sister and I made a plan to go up to the spot where we looked at the stars.

Back then, we used a light pollution map to find the best spot around here away from all the towns that wasn’t too far away.

Plus, it’s more north which is closer to the auroras.

They don’t call them the NORTHREN light just because.

The last time we tried to see them, we went south.

That clearly didn’t work.

Anyways, the plan we set.

The only other problem was my sister had to work in the morning, so she didn’t want to be out that late.

The auroras were seen the night before at 11pm, but they were also seen at 8pm.

So, we went up there at 8:30.

Once again, there was a faint glow on the horizon.

It wasn’t what it was hyped up to be.

We left after 30 minutes.

On the way back, I was thinking.

That couldn’t have been it.

So, I made the plan to go back out on my own at 11.

As you can see by the photo, I’M GLAD I DID.

Once I got up there and turned the car off, I could see it!

It was more than just a red glow; it had the green wavy bits.

It was still faint, but I could see it with my eyes.

I could tell where it was and where to point the camera.

It was moving and shifting from one side of the road to the other.

I wasn’t able to get any good video of it.

But I did remember to set up a GoPro in the car to get a night timelapse.

Here’s what it saw.

Again, not the best video.

I wasn’t out there long, so the video was a little short.

It was cold and windy.

I was only out there for 30 minutes again but managed to get around 50 photos of the aurora in different stages.

I picked out the best ones and uploaded them on Flickr.

Click here to see them.

Like with the eclipse, I was happy just to see it.

Getting a photo with me wasn’t that important.

I almost didn’t shoot one.

But as I was able to leave, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try.

I shot 5 photos, must of them were not great.

I didn’t want a lot of noise in the photos, so I had the ISO low.

But that means there isn’t that much light getting to the camera.

So, I needed a long exposure time to brighten things.

But that wasn’t working because IT WAS SO WINDY.

I was blurry in every photo from getting knocked around by the wind.

I had a BTS camera recording the whole time.

I was doing all things talking moments to it and you can’t hear anything.

Nothing but wind.

So, I decided to just crank up the ISO to shorten the exposure time.

It’s fine.

So, the photo will be a little grainy.

Oh well.

Once that was done, I left.

The aurora started to fade anyways.

The peak time was past.

Once I got home, I edited the photo.

I was so excited to see if I had anything that I forgot to record the editing process for the video.

I didn’t do much.

Here’s the original photo.

I brightened things up and added a little saturation to make the aurora shine.

The ISO noise wasn’t an issue because Photoshop has good de-noise features.

Compare the original photo and the final version below.

ONTO THE VIDEO!

The video covers the week the auroras happened.

Me being all depressed at the start, the snow, the auroras.

A simple video.

You can watch the video below...

That’s it.

We are currently in another snow storm.

We are getting another 8 inches.

Fun times.

Hopefully working on all this will give me a spark to finish the update videos that I’m behind on.

No guarantees.

I should make a Christmas photo.

So, I’ll see you then!