Riverdance
by Arild Heitmann
Been a while since my last post here...
This one is from early january. I had been been out countless times and returned with nothing. Nada...
But that`s part of the game, so i just keep going. I gave it another try, parked my car on a remote road in the forest and put on my skiis.
My headlamp was dead once again, so i only had a small flashlight to help me in the dark. There was about 50cm (20 inches) of snow out there. All pure powder...so i was struggling like crazy, but i tried to think positive. Good training and so on...
The aurora was present all the time. Not blazing, just a green bright band in the sky above me. I made my way down to a section of a river that had partly open water. Took some nice shots and kept going further into the woods.
The next hour i spent struggling in the deep snow. What a waste of time...didnt find a single decent place to set up. But i had a feeling things would explode in the sky so i headed back to the river. I was half dead when i reached it again...
I kept going further downstream, found a spot that looked promising in the dark and balanced my way out in the river.
I jumped from rock to rock until i was midstream, set up my composition and then i was ready...
Half an hour later theres still not any activity worth shooting. A few minutes later i see a tiny, bright & green band start moving really fast across the sky. All of the sudden the entire sky explodes.
The dark landscape is transformed into a green wonderland. My heart beats like crazy as i look at the aurora move insanely fast across the sky. It moved from the left of the frame to the right within a second. It was crazy...
Is it really this green, you may ask...it sure as hell is. It was a lot greener than the picture shows. I could literally see the river turn into a nuclear green fluid...it was so damn fascinating.
I threw away my gloves, pushed the remote and after exposing i could see that this one looked pretty good. A minute later the activity was back to normal.
Sometimes it pays off to be patient and spend 45 mins midstream in -20 degrees. When i looked again for my gloves i realized i had thrown them in the river...5 minutes later they were 2 solid iceblocks :-)
Hope everyone is doing good...
Cheers!
-Arild-
Comments
32 commentsBob
HUGE congrats, wish it was mine
This image and Marc A's more recent Aurora are very attractive images and I think they will go a long way in motivating more folks like myself to get up there to face that cold!
Thanks for posting it and the additional inspiration.
Mark
This is fantastic Arild, the green glow is intoxicating (in the good way).
Fantastic
Thanks for sharing and making me want to get up there even more!
The reflection on the water is very surreal.
Max
I was amazed you could handle -20 C !, I can handle +55 C but I can't handle 0 C !
it is really great picture