David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of the sun, moon, and stars
Winter walkabout in Tromsø, Norway. A random selection of images taken during the day. After dinner we did see a glimmer of Northern Lights peek through the bright city lights.
On our first night in Tromsø, Anna – a local photographer and her husband took us to a couple of locations to view northern lights. The first place, Telegrafbukta is not far (maybe 45 minutes walking) from the center of Tromsø along the fjord. I got many great images of the northern lights. I am not exactly sure what the walkway going into the cold water is for, unless they have a polar bear swimming club. This is obviously a favorite place for locals to view northern lights on a Friday night. There were at least a dozen folks just up the hill. I’ve reprocessed the images, and used them to create a star trails image, and a time-lapse video.
Individual images in the slide show can be viewed here.
Last year I was contacted by Condé Nast to use one of these images in a publication about European beaches. I told them that they could use the image if they downloaded it from my PhotoShelter Image Gallery and paid the appropriate rate (depends on size and publication circulation). I guess they didn’t like the rate suggested…
We then went to Kvaløya (Whale) Island for the 2nd image. The mountain on the right is lit up with a yellow color from sodium lights at the home near the water. It was a lot easier to photography the northern lights when on solid ground with a tripod. On the ship, even with a tripod you get the motion of the ship.
On the second day of the southbound Hurtigruten voyage, the MS Nordkapp stoped in eight ports: Mehamn (01:00-01:15); Kjøllefjord (03:15-03:30); Honningsvåg (06:00-06:15); Havøsund (08:15-08:30); Hammerfest (11:15-12:45); Øksfjord (15:30-15:45); Skjervøy (19:00-19:45); and Tromsø (23:45-01:30).
After going in and warming up, I went out on deck again early morning hours (just after midnight). One band of the green lights went all the way from horizon to horizon over the top of the ship. I switched to a fisheye lens and went to deck 7 where I could get this image (notice the big dipper). I had all of my cold weather gear on, and it was still cold, especially since the ship was moving at 15 knots. At this point you could tell who the hard-core photographers were, as we were the only ones still out on deck.
At the end of the day, I disembarked from the MS Nordkapp in Tromsø. I met up with a photographer friend from France (we both were on a photography trip with Thom Hogan in Patagonia in 2010/2011), and spent the next week in and around Tromsø “Chasing the Northern Lights”.
On the sixth day of the northbound Hurtigruten coastal voyage, the MS Nordkapp stopped in seven ports: Øksfjord (02:00-02:15); Hammerfest (05:15-06:45); Havøsund (09:30-09:45); Honningsvåg (11:45-15:15); Kjøllefjord (17:30-17:45); Mehamn (19:30-20:00); and Berlevåg (22:30-22:45).
On the previous night, the ship went to the narrow entrance of Trollfjord and shined high-powered spot lights to show the narrow passage and high walls. In the summer the Hurtigruten ships go into Trollfjord as part of the northbound voyage. In the winter they only go to the entrance due to avalanche danger. After the ship turned the lights off, I thought that I got an image with a glimmer of green from some low northern lights. The ship staff told me that it was just a reflection on a cloud from one of the fish farms. I went out again early in the morning and got an image that does show some faint northern light activity. Later in the evening, I got some more images showing some northern light activity. Several passengers asked why my camera was able to see the northern lights as bright green where they could barely see anything with their eyes, let alone with point and shoot cameras. The tour director on the ship was not yet making a ship wide announcement that northern lights were visible since he didn’t want folks to go away and say “is that all there is?”. Before beginning this trip I debated not taking a DSLR. Now I am glad that I did. These images were taken at ISO 1600, f/1.4, and 4 seconds. I didn’t have the tripod out with me so I held the camera body against my chest. You can see some camera motion in the stars, but it is not as bad as I thought it would be. For white balance, I used 3500 °K as a starting point since that is what I use when photographing star trails.
On the second day of the southbound Hurtigruten voyage, the ship stopped in eight ports: Mehamn (01:00-01:15); Kjøllefjord (03:15-03:30); Honningsvåg (06:00-06:15); Havøsund (08:15-08:30); Hammerfest (11:15-12:45); Øksfjord (15:30-15:45); Skjervøy (19:00-19:45); and Tromsø (23:45-01:30).
At about 01:00 the captain made an announcement that Northern Lights were visible. I put some warm clothes on and went out. It was cold (minus 10 degrees) and windy. But the northern lights were brighter than I ever remember seeing before when growing up in Minnesota. It was hard to stand still for 10 seconds on a moving ship in the cold and heavy wind to take a selfie. I did hear that some of the folks that got off in Kirkenes also saw the Northern Lights that night (but didn’t wake the others up…). It was because of the view that night that I decided to go back to Norway in the middle of the winter in 2013 — and saw even more impressive displays in Tromsø.
Two days earlier the family got together to have a birthday celebration for my father before the majority of the group disembarked the Hurtigruten MS Kong Harald in Kirkenes.
