An aurora movie blog

Everybody heard about the amazing aurora borealis we were to get starting the evening of May 10. I'll be honest and say that after seeing the aurora from the Arctic Circle, I'd become a bit of an aurora snob. Still, they said this would be good, so I picked a location and headed out about sunset.

My thought was to set up in South Glenmore Park, looking north, thinking I might get the aurora over downtown, and reflections in the water. Except all the action was to the south. Here's the photo that went around shortly after I got home.

Here's a link to the movie.  

This had my computer churning away for most of the day to edit over 1900 images that make up the sequence, and then assemble them into a movie.

The sad thing about it is that while there were lots of people out watching, many left before the show began at midnight. The people watching with their eyes wouldn't have seen any of this. All our eyes could see was what looked like a mist or a cloud. Even the people holding up their phones were only getting part of the show.

There is a followup here. 

K Gold 200 in colour (and b+w)

Those of a certain age, or good taste in music know I'm listening to a classic Cheap Trick album as I'm writing this. 

When I first started photography I was all about the colour. It's only recently that I've been coming around to the idea that sometimes less is more, that colour can be a distraction. In a recent session with the GW690 I accidentally left a yellow filter on, thinking I was exposing B&W film. I was not. It was Lomo 100 colour, but I rescued it by converting to black and white in Negative Lab Pro. 

Kodak Gold 200 is one of my favourite films. I fell in love with it on a trip to Yukon in 2022, in medium format with my GW690, photos here. Recently it was the film in my carry around camera, a Canon EOS 3 with a 50mm lens.

When I got the the film back from the lab, I'd thought of tweaking my workflow in Lightroom so I could more easily convert to both colour and black and white and see which I liked better. First step is to digitize and import. Make a virtual copy of all of them, and mark with a colour. Use NLP to convert to colour. Or black and white, it doesn't matter. Go back and select the original exposures, and make another virtual copy, mark them with a different colour. Use NLP to convert to colour or black and white, whichever you didn't do.

Now you have 3 copies of each image in a neat row, the original negative, the black and white, and the colour. It's easy to go through one at a time. My system is to mark the ones I want to work with as 1 star. I was surprised at the differences between the two versions, even more than the lack of colour. Most of them it was an easy choice. Other things popped out. I ended up picking 16 colour, and 7 as black and white.

My normal process is to crop out the borders and lightly edit in NLP. Then I'll go into Lightroom, deal with spots and hairs (and there's always at least some) and sometimes tweak the sliders a bit more. Mark with 3 stars to show I've edited, and export. 

1. As you'll see I'm kind of obsessed with reflections, especially during the multiple iterations of the winter to spring transition. 

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3. It's easy to see why this one doesn't work in black and white.

4. And this one didn't work in colour, with the trees going this lurid orange. 

5. Water is hard. I've seldom been happy with water photos that are not long exposures, and I've pretty much stopped trying. I'm not sure why I did this one, but it's about the closest I've done that shows what our eyes see. I think it's a slowish exposure, maybe 1/15 or so.

6. Bridge 8, one of the least photogenic bridges in Fish Creek. 

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8. Oddly enough the red of the dogwood (I think it's dogwood) doesn't really show up on digital. 

9. An optimistic flower in our garden, in between snowfalls.

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11. This was an easy choice, the colour was a swamp.

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13. My favourite two trees in Fish Creek. I'm still working on posing a model on them. Pity it was raining and 6C this morning, me and her bailed.

14. This was hard choice. It's still a bit orange, but the black and white was kind of off as well. It's hard to describe.

15. I'm not sure if the jpeg version in the blog will show the water effect I see in Lightroom. It's like there's a clear shimmer layer on top and the reflection is underneath it. Plus a bit of film grain. Way better in black and white.

16. More reflections in a swamp.

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20. There are times I regret carrying only one lens. Look for the heron. Having the 70-200 would have been so much better for the bird, and so much worse for the reflections.

21. Another view of the heron.

22. Reflections in a storm water pond. The grass went kind of orange and the clouds showed up better in this version.

23. Last photo on the roll, and wanted to be done. I went back and forth trying to decide which version was best.

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