I was heading up to the Upper Midwest this week, with the goal to be in Minnesota on Wednesday night. But on Monday when I left Cheyenne, there was talk of some solar activity for Monday night, but not enough to make me alter my plans of driving first to Chicago to meet with family.
But then on Monday night, the Northern Lights went nuclear, hitting G3, and surprising all of my friends who are Northern Light experts even. So I missed it.
I was feeling rather sad, as I could have skipped my family stuff and driven up to Montana and captured it. Now come to Wednesday, I had hotel reservations in Duluth Minnesota. While driving there from Chicago as it got later in the day, it was still a G1 storm, but after sunset, there were reports that the Northern Lights were starting to explode, it had hit G2 status. As I was getting closer to Duluth I was mentioning to the Northern Lights group that maybe I would just shoot up Wisconsin peninsula and find and open area to capture the Northern Lights, one of my Northern Lights friends suggested this spot called Brule Point, I hadn't heard of it, but I mapped it and saw it put me right on the shore of Lake Superior facing Minnesota on the opposite side.
It was starting to run late, to check into the hotel would delay me about an hour to get to the spot, so I called the hotel to tell them I would be late, and drove straight to the spot. I set up, and a Substorm hit after about an hour, the Northern Lights hit G3 status and all of my bad feelings of missing the Northern Lights on Monday totally disappeared!
I ended up with setting up 4 cameras, this one is my Nikon D850 that has the Sigma 14mm f1.8 permanently attached, all I use it for is night photography and it's my fire and forget night time camera. I was shooting 2 second exposures for my timelapse to capture as much movement as possible.
So this is one of the images.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. I did finally check into my hotel, but at 5am.
But then on Monday night, the Northern Lights went nuclear, hitting G3, and surprising all of my friends who are Northern Light experts even. So I missed it.
I was feeling rather sad, as I could have skipped my family stuff and driven up to Montana and captured it. Now come to Wednesday, I had hotel reservations in Duluth Minnesota. While driving there from Chicago as it got later in the day, it was still a G1 storm, but after sunset, there were reports that the Northern Lights were starting to explode, it had hit G2 status. As I was getting closer to Duluth I was mentioning to the Northern Lights group that maybe I would just shoot up Wisconsin peninsula and find and open area to capture the Northern Lights, one of my Northern Lights friends suggested this spot called Brule Point, I hadn't heard of it, but I mapped it and saw it put me right on the shore of Lake Superior facing Minnesota on the opposite side.
It was starting to run late, to check into the hotel would delay me about an hour to get to the spot, so I called the hotel to tell them I would be late, and drove straight to the spot. I set up, and a Substorm hit after about an hour, the Northern Lights hit G3 status and all of my bad feelings of missing the Northern Lights on Monday totally disappeared!
I ended up with setting up 4 cameras, this one is my Nikon D850 that has the Sigma 14mm f1.8 permanently attached, all I use it for is night photography and it's my fire and forget night time camera. I was shooting 2 second exposures for my timelapse to capture as much movement as possible.
So this is one of the images.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. I did finally check into my hotel, but at 5am.
