Coming up on this episode of Photography Online we
photograph local wildlife at both ends of the UK, we give your images a thorough
examination and we tell you all you need to know if you want to
photograph the aurora borealis. Welcome to part one of our february
2021 episode of Photography Online as you've just seen I've got an action-packed
show lined up for you and I'll be telling you what you can expect from part two a little later
on but first let's get this show on the road. So due to the current lockdown restrictions
our schedule has had to change, (several times I might add) but we're ever prepared and here
is something that we filmed last year all about interior property photography. If you want to
photograph your house and give it the wow factor then join us as we follow photography online
expert Marcus as he shot a commercial assignment for a local self-catering business. But as always
with Marcus he gives us lots of generic photo tips which can be applied to many other photo
situations as well so take note and enjoy. The Isle of Skye is a popular tourist
destination so there are lots of hotels and other accommodation which all need promotional photos
of their spaces and facilities. I'm often paid to take such photos so I thought it might be useful
to invite you along on a typical shoot and share some of the tips I use for interior photography.
Hi Marcus, how's it going? Good thanks. How are you? Yeah fine thank you. Welcome to Storr
Apartments. Pretty special isn't it? I think so yeah. The most important thing I'm looking to get
across in my photos is a flavour of the character of the property but first things first - take off
my muddy boots. I then walk around the property to get a feel for all the spaces and think about
where the best angles are going to be. Basically what I've done is I've worked out all the key
angles so now I'm going to start photographing and a good trick for photographing indoors never ever
photograph from eye level. So if i walked around and photographed everything with the camera up to
my eye what you're doing is you're giving a very familiar perspective of the room. So even though
someone who's never been here before, when they're looking at the photos they're looking at it seeing
exactly how they'll see it. You might think that's a good thing but if you put the camera lower
it achieves two things - number one it gives a very unusual perspective because we're not used to
seeing things from you know this height down here. So as soon as you show somebody a photo of that,
it doesn't matter whether it's a landscape or an interior shot, it looks more interesting because
it's unusual. People might not know why, but it's unusual because we're not used to seeing things
from two foot above the ground. Also by getting it down low you give a full sense of space so
if you think about back to when you were a small child and if you've ever returned somewhere as an
adult that you had been familiar with as a child the first thing you do is you walk inside and
you go "oh this is much smaller than I remember" and that's just because you're looking at it from
a higher viewpoint. If you get down low things look generally tend to look bigger with more space
and you have things in the foreground which give you that depth of field. So just by getting the
camera down low we achieve one very important thing and that's to create an improved perspective
and also a three-dimensional image which has got more space to it. I've got a very wide angle
lens on here but I need to be careful. If i shoot everything too wide angle then people looking
at the images who aren't familiar with the place they get the sense of increased space and then
they walk in the first thing they do is they're disappointed because it's not as big as it looked
in the photos which is obviously self-defeating so we don't want to go too wide with everything
but there's some rooms such as bathrooms which are very small where you do need to go wide in
order to show all the appliances in one shot. So I'm going to start off in here and my general
approach is to shoot it at diagonals and then I'll just work my way around the house and I'll talk
you through what I'm doing as we go. One of the most important factors when taking architectural
shots is to keep vertical lines vertical. That's now saying that the camera is perfectly level and
crucially the lens is pointing dead straight so in the middle there you'll see that as I push that
down um that's because you can have the camera level so that's saying the camera is level but
the lens is pointing down and can you see what's happened all the lines on the right hand side
of the frame are leaning outwards this way all the lines on the left hand side are leaning to
the left so it looks like everything's getting bigger towards the top. If i do the opposite and
point the camera upwards now everything's leaning inwards it looks like it's kind of falling
over over backwards. That's what we want to avoid. Once I've got the verticals sorted another
important factor is to pay attention to detail. This white cable down here aerial cable in the
photo is a bit of an eyesore and I could take that out in Photoshop but it would probably be
a two or three minute job to do it properly and it might or it might not be easier to just
temporarily get that off the floor like that and then that's solved the problem. So that was much
much faster than having to do it in Photoshop. So what we've got here is we've got all the
verticals still vertical all the way across the frame all the horizontals are going nicely
diagonally. We've got a sense of the couch here which is why I wanted to get the camera so far
back so you can see that this is a seating area but we also get a view through to the bedroom and
we also get a view through to the kitchen at the background there so this gives people a good idea
of the space that they're going to be living in. This is the obvious hero shot of the bedroom
because it has the dresser in the background and it's got this kind of feature chair in it
as well. So you'll notice that um I didn't have to do it because Nigel had done it beforehand but
he's put all the lights on all the bedside lights every single light that's available just put them
on because even though we're shooting this in the middle of the day and we don't need the lights
on in order to see the room, what it does is it creates nice little shadows on the walls and it
stops the walls being too monotonous. Another thing with interior photography, it's important
that when you put things down that you remember that you put them there because the amount of
times I've left my phone on a table and then when I've been editing the images you say "what's that
on there?" and you realise that you've now got to clone your own phone out of the of the shot. So
obviously we're in a bathroom now and it's quite a limited space and you tend not to have massive
windows in bathrooms so they're also quite dark. So we've got a feature bath here and a
little trick of the trade is to get a torch and hide the torch in the bottom of
the bath obviously turning it on. Shine it against the the front
surface so you get a nice reflection. I'll show you that. So you can see the the
luminance in the bath is roughly the same as the light that's falling on the toilet and also on the
top of the basin and then we br ought the towels in as well because there's nice bit of light
falling on the towels so those are the things that catch your eye. So what I've done is I've done all
the wide angle shots and now it's a case of going around with a kind of a prime lens doing shallow
depth of field just on the details like this wall here. It's obviously um a feature of the
apartment so you want to show that and obviously all the antique furniture just to give a an idea
of the atmosphere that you get in this apartment. So this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about
- minimum depth of field. So I've just focused on the pen there so you can see the background's
very out of focus and the foreground's slightly out of focus but it just gives an overall flavor
of the kind of atmosphere in the apartment. Finally I finish up by shooting a couple of
external shots to show the garden and the views. If like us, you're pretty much confined to your
home at the moment then hopefully some of that information will be of use. So as we find
ourselves faced with new virus restrictions, we're starting to offer more online services
to allow us to continue to work and for you to continue to have access to our services.
One of the ways we're doing this is by offering a range of online camera club talks and
presentations. If you belong to a camera club anywhere in the world and would like one of the
Photography Online teams to give a presentation, we've come up with a variety of topics to
choose from. These are now available to check out on our website for which i put a link
in the description down below. Now last month we launched a brand new feature called Wild
Diaries where we'll be talking you through everything you need to know if you want to improve
your wildlife photography. We don't just want to show you what's available here in Scotland though
- we want to include the whole of the UK and hopefully beyond. We found a way to bring you
ideas from both the top and bottom of the country without breaking any travel restrictions. First
we're off to Devon and to Dartmouth national park. The current restrictions have sadly prevented
me from visiting my new wildlife area which I'm developing for future Wild Diaries
shows. Happily though, in the meantime, I thought I'd get out and about and see
what I'm able to photograph locally. Living on the fringes of Dartmoor national park
gives me the perfect opportunity to take a walk in one of the UK's most sought-after photographic
locations. Dartmoor is famous for its wide open spaces plus of course its ponies and
rocky outcrops - its tours, and it's the heather and gorse that occur beneath many
of these tours that I intend to explore today. I've come armed today with only a telephoto lens
as I know that anything that I'm likely to find like to see is to be at a distance so this will
give me the ability to get optically closer. The very first thing I do is take
a little time upon first approach to scan for movement. A good pair of
binoculars will definitely help with this. It wasn't long before some movement in
the heather and gorse caught my eye. Having spotted this movement, it was time to get
a little closer and investigate a little further. There's a couple of deer about 100 metres or
so in front of me here so I'm just going to wait and observe them for a while while deciding
what the best route of approach is likely to be. Also the sun may well pop through any
moment which will help out with the light. With roe deer such as these, indeed with all
wildlife, it's always good to observe your subjects before shooting, as not only does this
allow your subjects to settle and get used to your presence, it allows you the time to settle
and think about backgrounds, direction of light, all things photographic - but most importantly of
course, you can just enjoy watching things unfold. I have actually moved a little because I needed to
consider and take into account the wind direction as if i'm upwind of the deer they will
feel more threatened and are less likely to hang about. They do actually know I'm here but
obviously I don't want to disturb them too much. These deer are used to seeing people so
my presence isn't going to disturb them but the last thing I want to do is risk
spooking them. Not only will this result in me getting no shots but it's also simply just
not good practice to disturb your wild subjects. This is where a telephoto lens comes into
its own - it will allow me to get the deer reasonably large in frame without tempting me
to get too close to them and disturbing them. This often leads to better photos
anyway, giving subjects room to breathe, telling stories, putting them in
context - that's what it's all about. I don't want to get a frame filling headshot of
a deer which could be absolutely anywhere - I'm looking to show it in its environment - to make
use of the beautiful colours, tones and textures that it lives within, to portray these
amazing animals as naturally as possible. Today, because I was unsure exactly what
I would find and because most importantly, I wanted to keep mobile, I decided to use
this 100-400. It's versatile and more than hand holdable, so having discovered the deer,
target acquired if you like, a quick look at some exposure settings... manual mode so i'm
in control.... set a shutter speed of around double that of the longest focal length of
the lens, plus a bit for luck - so that's a thousandth of a second. Then select the
widest non-variable aperture - so that's 5.6 with this particular lens. Finally, take a
meter reading of the ambient light and adjust the ISO accordingly. Patience and observation plus
a little bit of creeping about in the end pays off as i'm rewarded with some great views and a
few shots which achieve exactly what i was after - the deer of Dartmoor, or at least a
few of them. Now from one end of the country to the other where my colleague Harry Martin
has been observing a very different mammal altogether.... Thank you James. It looks like i'll
have to get down to Dartmoor myself pretty soon when I can. I'm here on Skye of course and you
might remember in one of last year's episodes, I showed you how to track and photograph otters.
If you haven't seen that then please go back and watch our may 2020 episode. Now one of the best
parts of my job is that I regularly head out to check up on individuals and otter families to keep
tabs on their routines and their behaviors - an essential part of me being able to head out and
run otter photography workshops. One of the most exciting discoveries I made recently was seeing a
regularly watched otter of mine with a very young cub. The first time I saw them was not long
since the cub had emerged from the holt - the place where it was born and really all that it had
known up until that point. It got into the water otters on Skye can have cubs at any time of the
year but many will give birth in late summer with cubs then appearing through autumn and winter.
I've been following the antics of this wee one for a couple of months now and it's so wonderful
to watch as it changes, grows and learns. At first mum would leave the cub tucked up on
the shore safe and sound while she went to fish. She would eat anything small
on the go, getting her fill and then when she caught something
larger she'd bring it ashore for the cub. One of my favorite shots to get is when an otter
is coming ashore with big fish. It's a good challenge trying to nail the moment it breaks the
surface of the water and getting an interesting and dynamic image. Focus here can be really
difficult. In autofocus it's easy for the camera to lock onto splashes of water and waves rather
than the otter. I'll often switch between auto focus with a single focus point and full manual
focus depending on just how rough the water is. Now when the mum brings a fish back she started
letting it go in very shallow water for the cub. This is all part of the steep learning curve cubs
have to go through in order to start catching their own food. It's both amazing and hilarious
watching a baby otter racing back and forth trying unsuccessfully to catch a fish or instead
successfully catching a bit of tasty seaweed. I've watched the cubs swimming underwater
in the shallows a couple of times and with our beautifully clear water here on
Skye, you can see right through and see it darting about underneath the surface.
I reckon there's an image to be had here, along with other great bits of
behavior that I haven't captured yet. Stay tuned for future Wild Diaries episodes
to see if i manage to capture them. Although we're in the depths of winter here in the
UK, spring is just around the corner and it won't be long before we're flooded with migrating bird
species, so now is the best time to start putting some thought into getting a photo project on the
go to document the wildlife in your local area, even if this is just in your back garden. We'll
be working on showing you what's possible in the coming months and i'm looking forward to
keeping up to date with what the guys find to photograph as the seasons unfold. Wild Diaries is
sponsored by Kite Optics who, among other things, make amazing binoculars - something which can be
invaluable for spotting and observing wildlife. There's a link in the description below if you
want to find out more. We'll also be giving away a Kite Optics prize very soon, so if you want to add
a top spec set of binoculars to your kit then keep an eye out for that. Now many of you have been
sending us your images and it's safe to say that our inbox has been bursting at the seams if you've
sent us a lone tree image as part of our Subject Project which we launched this year, then we've
put together a gallery of some of our favorites which we'll be showcasing in part two of this
month's show, so make sure you don't miss that. In the meantime, we're going to take a look in
more detail at some of the other photos that you've been sending in. Next up it's time to join
Nick Hansen in the Photography Online Surgery... I've got five nervous customers in the waiting
room so let's get the first one up onto the examination table. So here we have this winter
sunrise shot by Andy Macdonald, captured up in the Eldon Hills in the Scottish Borders. Really nice
composition here and he's made good use of the rule of thirds by placing the peaks of the hills
roughly on the intersecting horizontal thirds. Now in terms of the vertical thirds Andy has kind
of gone against the grain here so if we say that's about the horizon there, obviously he ends up with
two thirds sky and one-third land - nothing wrong with that at all, rules are made to be broken.
Normally I'd have two-thirds land one third sky. Obviously Andy has seen this really nice sky and
wanted to show it off with some really nice kind of subtle colours in it towards the right of
the frame here going across the cloud here and really nice use of the the path kind of coming
in from the bottom right hand frame going up here and then also going through the frame there so
leading your eye through the frame. Just a couple of things that kind of i'm being nitpicky here is
this area here with the two locks and on the right of the frame, just this bright patch here. So my
eye just kept drawn to those. I kept going left to the frame right of the frame. If we just look at
this next image where i've just cropped them out, for me it's just a slightly stronger composition.
So let's move on to the next shot by Sampo Lenzi. Now this was taken at the Keltman Extremes
Scottish Triathlon. It's a really nice use of the road here, so the winding road going through
the frame down here and also placing the subject shall we say which is obviously the triathlete on
his bicycle on the apex of the bend in the road. Now one thing I'm not big fan of is this
bright area here on the edge of the frame because obviously your subject is over here but
I kept finding that my eye was being drawn to this bright patch over here. Also just this
area here you know Sampo has used this rocky area here to get slightly higher elevation to
look down the road - nothing wrong with that but just including it doesn't work for me
personally so i've done a crop on it again like the previous image and i just think that's
a stronger image. Next up we have this image by David Yowe now rather than using a very quick
exposure time of say 1 /8,000 of a second to freeze the car and make it look like it was
basically just standing still on the race track, and moving the camera with the car David
has decided to use a longer exposure time and what this does is this blurs the background
and areas of foreground whilst keeping the subject the car as sharp as possible and this just creates
a lot of dynamism in the image and you can tell the car is moving very fast. In terms of
composition... spot on you know placing the car on the left of the frame, plenty of room in the right
of frame you know for the car to move into. Moving on to this image by Runar Lars son. Now Runar says
that it's a result of 27 photos in three groups, each group is focus stacked and has a different
exposure time. Now I take it he means that he has exposure bracketed and then he's merged it
into three photos and then merged the HDR to one single photo. So Runar has made really nice
use of this rock here because it's you know the line in the rock is pointing up so it draws your
eye through the frame. Now I'm not a massive fan of this plant or weed here sticking up from the
bottom of the frame. If Runar could have moved it, if it was dead, or placed the camera in front of
it, it would have just made it a lot stronger. The overall image has got slightly kind of bluer
feel to it. Maybe it was taken during the blue hour, I don't know. I would have preferred if
you know Runar had gone back when there was more movement in the water so you know, so the
water was maybe potentially lapping over these rocks it just created a bit more dynamism in the
frame so in terms of the exposure bracketing. I don't think there's any need for that, there's
no real deep shadows or bright highlights. In terms of the focus bracketing - so what he's
probably done is say focus down here, maybe here, here, and at the back to create you know that full
front to back sharpness. Now is that necessary? Again, I don't think so because when I look at
the image you know first and foremost my eye almost starts there and that's how it would
be if I was standing there taking the shot. So you know... does this bottom you know part of
the frame need to be pin sharp? Feel free to give me your opinion in the comments below. Moving on
to the the final critique image and this is by Frank Krummacher um sorry if I butchered your
surname there Frank. Now what Frank has done is he's actually created a pano here so it's not
just one frame cropped right down to a very narrow image. He's actually taken three shots and
merged them together. In terms of the exposure, the highlights are blown here and there's areas
up here where the highlights are blown and then down at the bottom, so just you know be careful
with the exposure when you're photographing things like waterfalls and you know when you're at the
coast or whatever. Just really exposing for the highlights is probably what you need to do most
of the time. In terms of the bottom the frame, I just personally think there's too much at the
bottom of the frame so I've done a crop here just to move some of the rock from the bottom.
Whether it makes it stronger or not you know that is my opinion. You know again feel free to give
your opinion in the comments below. It's always good to hear other people's opinion. And just
one thing... if possible if Frank could have, now he was on the decking viewing platform here
if you could have moved to the left a bit maybe so the camera was pointing from this direction
you may have excluded this rock here because I just find that the rock cutting off the bottom
of the waterfall just a bit distracting for me. So before I go I couldn't go without mentioning
this image by Andrew Coleman. This was taken at Dalcross, well near Dalcross Airport in the
autumn and it's just an absolutely stunning image. I can't really give any negative critique
on it, it's just an absolutely stunning image. We've got this lovely bright tree here
which has been picked up by the light coming in from the left of the frame and you
know picking up some of the leaves here as well. And this - your main focal point of the the image
- this brighter tree here is being nicely framed by these two trees and obviously these these two
trees on the left of the frame. So really nice image by Andrew. So that's it for this month's
Surgery session. If you'd like your image to be featured in a future show, all the information
can be found in the links section below. One of the upcoming shows is going to be dedicated
to panoramic photography so if you have any pano images you'd like our opinion on, and by panoramic
I mean around three times wider than they are tall, then send those into our Surgery feature and
we'll try to squeeze them in on the show. Now if you want to help support Photography Online and
help us produce better content then there are a number of ways that you can do this. Firstly you
can become an official supporter by clicking the JOIN button or going to the relevant link in the
description where you'll see a separate video from me explaining all the options. You can also
join us on our monthly webinar - MC2 LIVE which is 90 minutes of photography goodness, all done
live which allows you to interact in real time. Details are also down below. And finally
you can help out by spreading the word, telling your friends or anyone you know who might
be interested in picking up their camera or even starting from scratch. We're aim to enthuse as
many people as we can. One of the easiest ways that you can help is to simply press the LIKE
button. Not only does this allow us to see you appreciate the work we do, it also helps the video
get suggested to more people watching YouTube, so give us a LIKE if you can. Now as I mentioned
earlier in the show, here we are in the depths of winter but one thing which this is perfect
for, at least here in the northern hemisphere, is astrophotography and in particular the
aurora borealis or the northern lights. But if you've never tried to photograph
an aurora display before it can seem a bit daunting. Fear not though as we've put together
a two-part guide to photographing one of the most sought-after nighttime subjects. In this
first part of our aurora feature we're looking at the most difficult part - how to get
yourself in the right place at the right time. Over the past few years one of the most popular
natural phenomena to photograph has been the aurora borealis. It's only been practical
to get great shots of aurora displays since digital cameras have been able to capture decent
images at high ISO settings. In the days of film, it was simply too difficult to get a decent shot
but here we are in 2021 where even the most basic of new cameras can perform reasonably well at
ISO 6400 or above. If you want to photograph the aurora then I'm going to tell you everything
you need to know. In part 2 of this feature we'll look at what equipment you will need but before
that there's something far more important... In order to photograph the aurora you need to be
able to see the aurora and this is what prevents most people from having the chance to shoot it.
There are five key factors we need to consider when taking aurora photographs. Now the good news
is is that three of these are totally predictable or certainly within our control. The bad news
is the other two are totally out of our control, so there's always going to be an element of
luck involved. Let's look at the predictable ones first. Put simply, the closer to the Poles
you are, the better your chance of seeing aurora. Think of it like snow - the closer to the
equator you go, the less chance there is of seeing it. Here at Photography Online we're
lucky enough to be based far enough north that we get regular aurora sightings, but it's only the
strongest of these that make really good photos. The weaker and more common displays are often
just seen as a white or green haze on the horizon and are nothing to get too excited about, but
they do act as a great opportunity to hone your skills so that when a good display does occur
any mistakes have hopefully been ironed out. The best place to see the lights in the UK is from
Shetland, but it is possible to see them from any part of the countr. If you live south of Glasgow
though, then your chances start diminishing rapidly and it may only be once every few years
that you will get to see a decent display. If you want to travel further afield then Norway,
Iceland, Canada and Alaska are all great places from which to witness the aurora, which at these
locations is also known as the northern lights. The same phenomenum occurs around the South
Pole where it is known as the southern lights, but unless you're able to get to Antarctica,
there are far less land-based options to get far enough south to see it. You also need to
be in a location far from light pollution and with a clear view to the northern horizon. One
important factor to consider is what you're going to use as a subject. Now a shot of the aurora
on its own isn't going to be that impressive, so you really need something else to provide
the magic. So think about the aurora as just being the environment for which that can
happen. Ideally you want to choose a subject which protrudes above the horizon and well into
the sky and one that has a recognisable shape, such as this church for example, as unless you
like this it will be seen purely as a silhouette. If you're able to get reasonably close to your
subject then you may be able to artificially light it to create an extra dimension but don't light it
so much that it detracts from the aurora. If you want some tips on how to do this we explained all
about painting with light in last month's show. Another factor to consider is not to get too close
to your subject because we're going to be shooting at a very wide aperture it's going to give us a
very shallow depth of field, but of course we're going to be focused on infinity so anything
closer than infinity is going to appear soft. Now where infinity starts is totally dependent on
your focal length. Basically convert your focal length to metres and you should be okay using this
as a minimum distance at around f/2.8 or more. For example if you're using a 24mm lens, don't
have your subject closer than 24 metres.Water can also work well to reflect the aurora, essentially doubling its size in the frame,
but you still need to have a focal point. Once it gets dark ideally you want
the moon to be well below the horizon, as if it's visible it will prevent the sky from
going totally black and therefore it will reduce the contrast between the sky and the aurora. Now
if you leave it up to chance then you've got a 50/50 chance of the moon being out of the way but
this is 100 predictable so if you are planning a trip to Norway or Iceland, don't plan it during a
full moon. If you find that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shoot the aurora from the location
you live in coincides with the moon being in the sky, then the smaller it is the better. A thin
crescent moon won't make too much of a difference but a full moon will be a disaster. Now we
come down to the final two factors which are the ones that are out of our control but they
can be predicted to a fairly accurate degree. Now hopefully it won't come as too much of a
surprise when I tell you that you're going to need clear skies. Now if you've got a few clouds
scattered around as we've got here that can actually add to the scene but a majority of your
view wants to be clear especially to the north. Weather forecasts are the thing to watch here, but
don't just look at one and assume that it will be accurate - use three or four different sites
and cross-reference them. The aurora app which we're going to discuss in a moment also shows
real-time cloud coverage for the whole of Europe. So we're in an ideal location - check.
We have a suitable subject - check. We have a clear view to the northern horizon
- check. And we have clear skies.... hmmm Okay well we just need to use a bit of imagination
there. So all we need now is aurora activity. Now this is where lots of people think it gets
complicated but predicting the aurora is no different from predicting the weather. In fact,
aurora activity is simply weather in space - all we need to do is look it up online to see whether
or not it's likely to happen. To get the view of an expert, I caught up with Andy Stables who
runs the Aurora Alerts UK website and app. Having spent many years studying and photographing
the aurora, he's the go-to guy when it comes to lights in the sky. For photographers
who are wanting to photograph the aurora what should they look out for in terms of the
research that they do? How are they going to know when the aurora is going to happen? Right, so the
best thing to do is to get my app and install that on your phone and you can also use it on your
laptop or PC. It works on everything. What we'll do is we'll put a link to your website in the
video description so that people know where to go, but typically speaking how far in advance would
you say people can accurately predict some kind of activity? You can accurately predict from
about 27 days in advance. Because the sun spins around on its axis and as we view
it, it spins every 27 and a half days and so what happens is you get these things
called coronal holes that emit plasma, as the solar wind that comes at the Earth, and
they cause auroras. And those holes can stay open for several rotations of the sun, so it's possible
to predict sometimes two or three months even in advance if it's a hole that keeps staying open.
If you were looking say three or four days ahead is that more predictable than looking 27 days
ahead or does it make no difference? There are cameras on satellites that are taking images of
the sun so you can actually see the coronal holes. So as it rotates around, the hole
you'll see that it when it's dead center and that plasma is coming towards us so about
three to four days later it hits the Earth um by which time that actual coronal hole has
moved a little on the solar disk and what will happen is it disappears off the imagery and
it goes around the back of the sun and then five or six days before it's going to be in the
middle again you'll start to see it turning on so you can see that it's still there and it's
still the same size. So you get that good sort of five or six day period before it comes around
again that you can tell that you're still good. And is there any equipment between us and
the sun that can detect that as it passes? Yeah so what happens is that there's a
satellite scene at the L1 position which is about a million miles from Earth between
us and the sun and that's called Discover and it's basically got a magnetometer. It's
measuring the the magnetic field coming from the sun. It's measuring the speed and density of
the plasma that's coming, so it basically acts as the next early warning system that basically
tells you for certain that this thing's coming. So um like yesterday morning about half past
eight um it detected a shock which is where a wave of plasma like a tsunami of plasma just
hit the satellite and my app picks that up and sends out an alert to tell people that
it's detected the interplanetary shock which basically means the plasma's coming.
And then about an hour later it hits the Earth and then the aurora was starting but obviously in
the day because it hit about half past eight in the morning but the effects lasted the whole
day. So last night as soon as it was dark um in the afternoon from about three or
four in the afternoon people in Finland started reporting on the app that they were
getting aurora and then obviously as soon as it started to get dark here it was coming through
the twilight in the evening and then we had great like aurora show last night. Is it possible to
go too far north? So for example I've been in um the Faroe Islands before and i've seen on
social media an amazing aurora here in Scotland and it was clear and I saw nothing and yet i'm
further north. So in that situation was I too far north? Yeah it's a really lucky situation for
us, because the aurora is like a donut around the magnetic pole and as it gets stronger it
pushes towards the equator, so it can actually pass right over you and then the aurora moves much
further south of you and you can see nothing at all. And you wish you just stayed at home! Yeah!
It's a very it's a very rare thing to happen so it's not common. So we think about of the
aurora as being a winter event but obviously you know it needs to be dark for you to see the
aurora so do do they happen equally 24 hours a day 365 days a year it's just that we notice them more
in the in the winter because it's dark more often? Yeah they're happening all the time all year round
and obviously sometimes are better than others. So the equinoxes you get much more the substorms
that cause the auroras you get much more of those in the equinoxes so autumn and spring. So when
we see photographs of aurora the most common colour we see is green from certainly from here
but then occasionally you'll see other colours further up in the atmosphere what causes those
colours and do they differ from geographic place to geographic place? Um the colour is basically
caused by the particles coming into the atmosphere from the plasma reacting with the molecules in in
the air so things like the oxygen it causes the yellow and the greens and nitrogen causes the red
and they're really the two colours that we see. The commonest problem with aurora colours is
that people do a lot of manipulation with the cameras. They mess with the white balance and that
you'll get this thing of the mythical blue aurora, but what's actually happened is they
put the white balance on tungsten so they've basically changed all the yellows
and greens into blues and shades of blue so it's not really representative of what the
colour is. For someone who photographs the aurora probably more than you know 99.9% of people,
what's the thing that gets you really excited when you when you see it happening? It's basically
when you get that night when it really explodes. When the sky is full of it. When it's overhead
- that is just incredible. So every night you're going out there doing run-of-the-mill aurora
just a straight band of green with a pink top every night it's the same thing you know.
Sometimes it's a bit bigger sometimes you manage to get some rays but then on those top
nights when it really kicks off it's absolutely unbelievable. And you get all the structure and
it's kind of up above you rather than just on the horizon... When you get all the structure the sky
is full of it and when you can point the camera straight up and get the corona over the top of
you, see all in the columns going up vertically then it's amazing. And when you see in colour
with your eyes because mostly obviously the thing that catches people out is that they expect
to see what the photos are catching and what you actually see is just white and shades of white
monochrome. But when it when you get a really good strong one then it's full colour with your
eyes and it's really impressive. And how often here would you say that that happens? Getting
it in colour to my eyes and everyone's eyes are different but colour to my eyes... maybe half
an hour a year. Right. And i'm photographing auroras all night every night. Yeah so it's
quite a rare event? So it's a very rare yeah. A big thanks to Andy Stables there. If you're
interested in seeing or photographing your aurora then you won't find a more accurate forecasting
app than the one Andy has designed himself. The best part is that it's totally free, so as
promised there's a link to his website below. So the only thing standing between you and a great
photo of the aurora is knowing what equipment camera settings and shooting technique to go for.
We'll be giving you the full rundown of this in our next show so make sure you don't miss that.
Incidentally, there's a chapter all about astro and aurora photography in our Essential Camera
Skills book. It's 68 pages crammed full of hints and tips from the show's experts and comes in both
a physical and a pdf version, so if you'd like either then check out the relevant link. Sadly
though that's it for part one of our February 2021 show, but you don't have to wait long for your
next Photography Online fix. I'll be back in just two weeks with part two, where we'll be looking at
where you can and can't save money in photography, taking you along on a sunrise shoot, continuing
our aurora feature and showcasing some of your lone tree photos. Until then, take good
care but most of all take good photos.
