Sometime in the early 2000s, I witnessed the Aurora Borealis for the first time from my house in Everett. It was nothing like the photos you see from Alaska or Norway but no less fascinating. Over the last few years, I’ve paid closer attention to the watches and notices that come out when the aurora activity is strong enough to be seen from Washington with the hopes of photographing them. Far too often, clouds and our typical northwest weather have prevented me from seeing or photographing them. Last night, forecasts for auroras were favorable but it wasn’t until I saw a photo tweeted by the National Weather Service Seattle of the auroras over Seattle that I got off my butt and out the door to look for them. A photo from a friend in the area only hastened my departure.
I selected a spot just west of Monroe near Frylands because of its expansive view towards the north and northwest. Not a bad choice for a spot close to home! Some low fog started creeping in from the east which added a bit of interest to the foreground.
This was my first real opportunity to photograph and process photos of auroras. From what I’ve been able to piece together, processing of aurora photos isn’t much different than processing for other night or astro-photographs- it all boils down to personal preference. My personal preference is that my night skies still look dark. To accomplish this, I choose a white balance temperature that’s on the cold side. The photos in this post all use a temperature of 3500k and that’s been my personal preference for a while now. Why even bring all this up? Well, I wanted to explain why my photos of the auroras look different than any of the others that are floating around from this event. For example, my friend’s photos show lots of purple in addition to the typical greens. Piecing it all together, I suspect that he was using a warmer white balance such as the Cloudy or Shade preset. As an example. here’s a side by side comparison of one of my photos using my preferred white balance (3500k) on the left and Daylight (5500k) on the right:
I don’t recall seeing any purples last night so that’s an example of why I lean towards a cooler white balance for my night shots. Today’s cameras are very sensitive and can capture features (especially at night) that our eyes can’t see. That being said, it is about personal preference. This just happens to be mine. 🙂
