Welcome To Alaska Light Show

Our arrival in Alaska has been eagerly awaited and planned for a few years so crossing the border into Alaska outside of Tok was a great feeling, especially after experiencing communist Canada firsthand. The people in the Yukon were normal enough, but were definitely living in fear of their government. That was a feeling that we knew all too well having to flee the long-time multi-generation family home in Washington due to the Governor’s dictatorship with never-ending mandates and sky-high taxes. Escaping both places and finally making it to Free America was an awesome feeling.

We eventually made it to an RV park near Wasilla where temperatures were substantially warmer than interior Alaska so we set up the trailer there to get settled in until I started my job later. This also gave us time to get our new driver’s licenses and vehicle license plates too. We were thankful that we got the winter trailer for sure. We arrived early to allow time to get these things done and so that we could scout out areas to buy a house at. We did not want to blindly buy a house only to find out later that we live in meth-maggot central. We also did not want to buy a place where the surrounding area might become a housing development later so we would lose our privacy.

Alaska welcomed us with a Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) show with all sorts of greens and just a little hint of reds. There were also white flashes speeding across the sky and I had to look twice to see if I was actually seeing those or if my eyes were playing a trick on me. There were definitely there, but I could not photograph them or get them to show up on a video due to their speed and the low light. I used our good Nikon DSLR camera to take some photos of the Northern Lights and I had to learn as I went because I never had an opportunity to photograph them before. The Northern Lights actually occur through the summer too, but it is too bright to see them so the winter months along with late fall and early spring are the only times to see them.

They are hard to describe and hard to photograph so you will have to experience them firsthand to really appreciate them. Our cell phone cameras didn’t capture them very good at all, but a higher-grade phone may work. The show lasted for a couple hours and was great to see even though it was below freezing outside. I tried many different camera settings and found out what seemed to work best for freehand photography. You will need a tripod along with a remote shutter release or timer to get better photos so plan that accordingly. Our tripod was still buried so I saved that for later photos and another story later.

It seems that the professional Northern Lights photographers keep their camera settings a closely guarded secret so we will publish the settings we use along with the techniques once we get them perfected this next fall or winter. I will also be “Painting” a person in front of the lights too and post the “How to” as soon as I get it figured out. Painting is a photography term where you use a flash to light select areas of the photograph while leaving the other areas untouched. This will require a tripod and long exposure so we will see what happens. I have used this technique before to make my youngest daughter look like several identical twins for trick photography. The crime scene photography class I took years ago has definitely helped out over the years.