I finally got some northern lights over Lake Superior. I used Elliot fall that is found on the east side of Miner's Beach in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore as my foreground. Predictions were great for the lights, but dense clouds and a strong north wind at dusk eliminated my chances. Not to quit, I set my alarm for 1 am and it was calm and clear then. So I drove to Miner's Beach to look for the lights - and it wasn't hard to see them as their glowing lit the way through the forest. Though the wind had subsided, the waves were still rolling in. Eliot fall is right on the beach and the waves touch it. At times, I felt like I was a peanut in a room full of chipmunks, as the waves chased me around on the slippery sandstone, but I managed not to fall.
Once I got my composition using a headlamp and flashlight in the dark night at 2 am, I set the camera to about f/13 for some DOF and lit the fall with a flashlight. I used Cloudy WB, focused on the rock manually using live view where the water plunges off, and shortened the exposure to about 8 seconds to eliminate any possibility of the night sky and northern lights appearing in the background.
I shot several images until I got one where my light painting with a flashlight was pleasing to me. Though I am adept at flash, I did not want to use it here as that would freeze the falling water and I wanted it to blur so I used the weak continuous light source of a flashlight. Once I got the waterfall image I wanted, I then focused to infinity for the stars as best I could, changed the white balance to 3800K so the night sky would not be too warm in tone, changed the shutter speed to about 25 seconds, and opened up the aperture to about f/3.5. Activating my in-camera multiple exposure option, I selected the image of the waterfall I liked to be the first of a double exposure. My Canon 1DX Mark II copies the file, and then it is a simple matter to shoot the second exposure of the northern lights. I did this sequence repeatedly as the northern lights change in size and intensity over time. Two hours later, this frozen photographer crawled off the slippery rocks and made the 300 yard trek back to the truck. It was well below freezing, and shooting by myself, I was well aware that falling and breaking something could easily be fatal, so I was as careful as I could be.
Early in the morning, the crescent moon was floating in the eastern sky, so I selected the double exposure result I liked best to be the first of another double exposure, used a Canon 200-400mm lens with the 1.4x making it a 560mm focal length, set the exposure for the crescent moon, turned my life view on so I could see the image that I would be adding the moon to, focused using a magnified live view image, and shot it into the scene. I realize the moon rises in the east and the northern lights are in the north, but I call it poetic license.
I post this to share the northern lights with you and to suggest you might want to look at your multiple exposure options more closely if your camera offers it. Did you notice I could change the focus point, white balance, f/stop, and shutter speed from one image to the next? That opens up a whole world of possibilities! I cannot change the ISO, though, or I would have used ISO 400 for Elliot fall, and then switched to ISO 3200 for the sky.
I think there is a good chance for more northern lights tonight too. Check you northern light alert web sites, and good luck.
Elliot Fall on the East side of Miner's Beach - moon shot two hours later when it rose above the trees using in-camera multiple exposure
Elliot Falls as northern lights danced in the distance
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