12 Months of Northern Lights

I’ve experienced the Polar Night a couple of times while leading photography workshops at Aurora Holidays. Since then, we’ve moved the workshop to March, which makes travel easier for us North Americans and allows for the addition of more landscape-focused shooting. During one January night, we had full-sky aurora until the activity intensified and pushed the aurora oval south as far as Helsinki, giving us a brief break before the lights returned to dance above our cottages once again.

My goal on this night was to create a star trail, but when I arrived on location I noticed a glow along the horizon. A quick test shot confirmed it was the Northern Lights. The display wasn’t especially strong, but it was nice to catch hints of red alongside the more familiar green. There was some green remaining on the horizon throughout the night which can make star trails tricky.

Back in Utsjoki with Aurora Holidays during Spring Light in Lapland for a March Northern Lights image. The displays were spectacular, with intricate structures dancing across the sky and bursts of vivid colour. One night, we were treated to auroral coronas overhead – an effect where the light appears to radiate from a single point. The group was super excited, but it led to some awkward moments trying to angle cameras straight up on tripods while I crawled around to help people, ensuring I didn’t stand up and appear in their wide angle frames.
This is truly one of the best places to see the Northern Lights, and some of my clients that also live in the Canadian Rockies continue to say their experiences on this workshop made them aurora snobs at home!

It’s impossible to predict exactly what structures and colours will appear during a northern lights display, but there are some common patterns in auroral behaviour. Often, an arc forms in the northern part of the sky and, around Banff, it usually sits just above the horizon. On this particular night, the aurora arced perfectly over Cascade Mountain and the Town of Banff, eventually becoming energetic enough for distinct structures to emerge and dance across the sky.

On May 10, 2024, we experienced the strongest geomagnetic storm in the last two decades. From 52° north, it brought a wall of colour to the southern sky, while early in the night, there was very little activity to the north for me. Clouds at my original location forced me to drive farther than planned. I had intended to hike up a mountain ridge, but when I reached the parking lot, the weather didn’t match the forecast. It was fully overcast! Instead, I kept driving further and further north until I found clear skies – and it turned out to be the right decision.

June 2025 was when I realized I had photographed the Northern Lights in every single month of the year. I was teaching a workshop at Dinosaur Provincial Park with a focus on the Milky Way. The weather had been kind, and we were on our second night of Milky Way photography when the aurora began to dance. By 1 a.m., it had become a full-sky event, and most of the group kept shooting until the sky started to brighten with the rising sun. The sky only got as dark as astronomical twilight, but the aurora still stood out against the sky.

I do have aurora images from July without cloud cover, but they’re from my first year of serious night photography, and some of those compositions weren’t the strongest since I had planned for Milky Way friendly locations. So, I’m sharing a cloudy image with aurora. While scrambling in the dark with a friend, hoping to catch the Milky Way, rain started coming down. We tucked ourselves into a slightly sheltered spot beneath a cliff to wait out the weather. That’s when I noticed the clouds beginning to glow, barely breaking just enough to let the aurora show through. I grabbed a few long exposures to capture the movement and colour in the clouds. At least we were rewarded with an incredible sunrise later that morning.

This example also a good reminder that we are always at the mercy of the weather. But if you don’t take chances, travel, or ever try to go out, you’ll never get anything. Some of my favourite images have happened by accident or because I took a chance on some questionable conditions.

Another Milky Way adventure unexpectedly delivered a beautiful aurora. There’s something special about the lights showing up as a surprise when you’re already out under clear skies. The Milky Way can be found any night with skies that are dark enough (at a certain illumination, moonlight will wash it out) but at my latitude, the aurora is never a guarantee.

Many people travel to Iceland hoping to see the Northern Lights, but the weather there can be extremely challenging. I’ve been fortunate to see the aurora on both of my visits, though I know others who have been multiple times without any luck. During one trip, I spent ten days in Iceland and had only a single truly great night of aurora. I tried to stay flexible with my itinerary to chase clear skies, but there was simply a lot of rain and cloud throughout my visit. The forecasts would constantly change, and it was tough to decide on a direction to drive in. I was happy to get the lights over a waterfall.

After the big May event in 2024, we were treated to two fantastic nights of Northern Lights in October – on the 7th and the 10th. Both displays were bright and colourful, and bright enough that I could easily make out the colours with the naked eye. On the night of the 10th, however, some moonlight washed out the stars and the aurora, giving the display a slightly softer appearance compared to a few nights earlier.

On November 11, 2025, the aurora was visible early in the evening. An intense section of pink could be seen easily with the naked eye, bright enough to cast a soft pink glow across the surrounding mountains – a subtle echo of alpenglow, though far less intense. The pink image on the left was captured with my astro-modified camera, which is more sensitive to reds. I did desaturate the image slightly in editing, so it appeared even more intense straight out of camera.

That night, the aurora spanned the full sky with the pink in the North, and the auroral oval extended so far south that my friend Dani was able to see the pinks all the way in Texas.

This image comes from my first year of aurora chasing. It’s a simple scene captured on a back road while my friend Mitch and I were hunting for both clear skies and the aurora. The orange wisps on the right are clouds catching light pollution.