10-10-24

Working at Lake Mountain Fire Lookout in the Klamath National Forest for the summer, I usually took my camera up every week. I never knew what “Photo Opportunities” may present themselves while I was there. Considering my work week involved staying up there four days at a time, I couldn’t just drive back to the house and pick up my camera if something showed up, especially considering it was a two-hour drive—one way—to get back to my house or personal car.

One of the weeks I was working, the news reported the Aurora Borealis may appear further south than normal. I looked at the aurora prediction mapping on the internet and it predicted the aurora may be visible as far south as Portland, OR. Well, Portland is about 300 miles north of me, so I did not believe I would get a chance to see it.

During the night of the predicted activity, I walked out on the catwalk and looked at the sky at approximately 8 pm. I did not see anything out of the norm, so I almost just forgot about it. Then I remembered reading somewhere that it is not uncommon to not be able to see the aurora with your naked eye, the further south you are. So I grabbed my camera and just rested it on the catwalk railing and took a long-exposure photo – I believe it was for five seconds. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised to see the photo reveal a red sky.

So, I grabbed my tripod and started to take some long-exposure photos from the catwalk, looking north. I was amazed at how red the sky was in the photos, even though I did not notice anything with my naked eyes. After a few photographs of the sky, with just distant mountains in the foreground, I decided to try and make something better.

I grabbed a flashlight, my tripod, and my camera and walked down the slope from the lookout. I found a location that would include the lookout itself in the photograph for a more compelling shot. The red sky was more prominent to the east (camera right) of the lookout tower, thus I concentrated my composition for the tower to be more on the left of the frame and the red sky to the right of the frame. This however changed as I was taking photos, with the intensity of the red sky drifting around a little. I was taking 15-second exposures and enjoying what I was seeing on the back of the small LCD screen of the camera. I still did not see any color in the sky with my naked eye.

After some time, I decided I probably had seen what the aurora had to offer and had taken numerous photographs of it. So I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed back up to the lookout. I was very excited to have witnessed this phenomenon and even more excited I would be able to share it with my photographs. I did also take several other compositions including trying to get a photograph with the aurora and Mt Shasta with varying levels of satisfaction.

About an hour after returning to the lookout, I wondered if the aurora was still showing or not. I walked back out to the catwalk and looked at the northern sky. To my surprise, I could actually see a very noticeable red tint in the sky with just my naked eye. Once again I grabbed my camera and with a quick test long-exposure shot, confirmed the sky was even a brighter red than before.

So, back down the slope I went, to see what some long-exposure photos would produce. Again, I was concentrating on the red sky to the right of the lookout tower. I was not disappointed at all with what was coming out of the camera. I should also point out, there was a half-moon high in the sky. This was lighting up the tower and the landscape in the foreground which helped them stand out in the photograph. So much so that when I later processed the photos, I had to lower the exposure of the foreground and tower, as they were too bright and slightly distracting from the aurora.

While taking these photographs, I paused to just watch the sky. As I was doing this, I noticed a white streak to the left of the lookout tower in the sky. At first, I thought it might be a contrail from a plane. The more I looked at it, I discounted this theory as it did not match what you normally see in a contrail. I then thought it might be a cloud, but this was also discounted for the same reason. So I swung my camera to the left to include this mysterious white streak in the sky and took a photo.

The streak in the sky was apparently part of the aurora. Just looking at the small LCD screen on the back of the camera, I instantly was extremely excited with what I saw. This was hands down the best photograph of the night! As I studied the photograph on the back of the camera, I was so pleased with what I had captured and couldn’t wait to see it on a bigger screen.

The photograph is what is shown here. There was very little post-processing used because it was actually that good, straight out of camera. The most post-processing was darkening the foreground as I mentioned above. Considering I went to work at the fire lookout that week with no expectation of anything to photograph and then walked away with this gem!

24mm f3.2 ISO 1600 13secs