Iceland Aurora Beach Panorama

Title

Iceland Aurora Beach Panorama

Artist

Mike Berenson

Medium

Photograph

Description

Over a two-week period, I was really happy that I got to see pretty much all of the sights in Iceland I wanted to see. But even though I got to see some Aurora on my first night on the island, I still craved for more before I had to leave. Arctic storms and generally cloudy skies made night photography a bit of a challenge at times. So with just hours to go before I needed to head back to Reykjavik for my flight back home, I saw a prediction for clearing skies on the southeastern coast and that was all I needed.

To be honest, I wasn't even worried about the forecast for Aurora activity because the clouds were my biggest challenge. During my visit, I believe I missed out on a lot of activity because clouds were in the way. So I figured if there was a clearing, I was NOT going to miss it. Besides, I could always sleep later.

So after driving through snowy weather (in the dark) for much of the way out to the spot I had in-mind, the weather finally cleared. I pulled into a parking lot in Jökulsárlón and began checking things out. I saw some green in a quick test picture I shot just as I got a text alert from Spaceweather - letting me know that a moderate solar storm had just begun. And with that, I knew the show was on!

While I'd been on the beach for several sunrises, I hadn't yet seen it under Aurora skies. I knew the ice was amazing to see and shoot with sunrise light behind it or even blue ice next to it. And while I had seen some small crowds of people in the mornings, I'd heard it can be even more crowded under glowing Aurora skies. Having this in the back of my mind when I pulled up to the beach and ventured out to the ice made the fact that I was still the only one there on the beach an even more amazing experience. This was after all, my first choice out of any place in Iceland to be shooting the Northern Lights. For me, this was a dream come true!

How I Got The Shot
With the Aurora flowing from one horizon to the other, I knew I wanted to capture a panoramic image to take it all in. I picked a spot where I could catch the scene from a big icy chunk on the left all the way to the setting moon on the right. And with the green stuff flowing up so high in the sky, I decided I'd need to do two passes - one for the land and lower sky and another for the upper portion of the sky. So I set my camera in a vertical orientation and shot seven images across the scene with a target of at least 40% overlap on each frame. When I got to the end, I pointed up higher to set up for a second row of vertical images that would catch the upper section of the sky. With the Aurora flowing across this area, I thought that taking the time to shoot a dedicated second row would be well worth it.

On the processing side, I used PTGui to stitch the frames together. And since all the frames included some icy foreground, it wasn't too hard to stitch it all together. I've found that images with just upper portions of the sky and no land can take more time to stitch together. Anyway, I once assembled and straightened, I just exported the psd so I could work with it in Photoshop. From there, I just cropped and added some curves adjustments to bring back the overexposed areas.


Photo Gear
• Camera Body - Nikon D800 Digital SLR Camera
• Camera Lens - Nikon Fisheye AF Nikkor 16mm f/2.8D Autofocus Lens
• Tripod Head - Acratech GV2 Ball Head / Gimbal Head with Lever Clamp & Acratech Large Leveling Base
• Tripod Legs - FEISOL Elite CT-3472 Rapid Tripod Legs
• Remote Trigger - Vello Shutterboss Version II Timer Remote Switch for Nikon with 10-Pin Connection

Exposure Settings - Panoramic Sequence
14 Stitched Frames - with 2 rows of vertical images

• ISO:1600
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter Speed: 15 seconds

Uploaded

December 14th, 2014

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