Photographing the northern lights

Adirondacks skies are screening a continuing show

By Mike Lynch

Johnathan Esper grew up in Long Lake, and has gone on to become a leading Adirondack landscape photographer. 

His focus is to capture wilderness and that includes shooting the colors of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights. 

Right now, the nighttime shows that northern lights perform are a hot topic because we’re within the peak of the current solar cycle. That means the opportunity to see them in the Adirondack Park is far greater than normal. 

Some photographers have captured them close to two dozen times this year alone, whereas they might only witness them a couple of times during the less active time of the cycle. The viewing peak is expected to last through 2025.

Esper, 41, now living in Lake Placid, has snapped images of the phenomenon in various countries around the world, including Sweden, Norway and Iceland, and now is seeing them more frequently in the Adirondacks.  

In the following question-and-answer session, Esper talks about his experiences photographing auroras and offers some advice for people looking to see them. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Could you share your experiences of photographing northern lights? 

I wasn’t really as active photographing the aurora borealis or keeping track of that in the Adirondacks in the last solar cycle approximately 11 years ago because during that time I was in a phase in my life where I was leading a lot of photo workshops in Iceland. Basically, every winter I was guiding workshop groups over there. The chance to shoot the lights is one of the big reasons why I went to Iceland. That was a place to see it. Of course, there’s always Fairbanks, Alaska, there’s always Tromso, Norway, Lafonten, Norway. There’s Abisko, Sweden, and there’s Yellow Knife in Canada. So there’s plenty of places around to view them.

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In photographs I’ve seen from Iceland, there are these big wavy arcs up into the sky. Here we don’t seem to get them, right? 

(In Iceland, if there’s low level activity), there will be a green band on the horizon. If this activity gets stronger than that, the green band starts to come overhead, and then you’ll have more curtains of light that would be waving or shimmering overhead. Sometimes you will be directly looking up, like straight under, a curtain of light. So on the horizon, it looks more like a band with sometimes some vertical curtains above the band of light. Then as it comes overhead, you look up into those fingers of light, or up into the curtain, almost as if you’re on the floor looking up at curtains on your window. I’ve seen much more purple fringing on the bottom of these waving and shimmering curtains of light in the Arctic regions. Typically they are green with a purple fringe at the bottom edge. Those are the most beautiful with your eyes. 

Most of the aurora displays here in the Adirondacks are also low, but they’re not bright and vibrant enough to be as impactful to your eyes. So you can still occasionally see them, but it’s going to be a whitish band in your eyes, and it’s going to be slightly whitish vertical columns you can barely perceive with your eye. And then they turn out to be beautiful on the camera.

I found that here in the Adirondacks, before the peak of the solar cycle, all you would see with a camera was a faint green band. Sometimes it looks yellow green or green, or blueish green or different color shades. The aurora would only go a few degrees, five degrees, 10 degrees above the horizon, and you would need to be at an open lake or somewhere. You couldn’t be in the forest looking straight up. However, it seems in the last year, especially this year, there’s been a lot of these really strong solar storms where the colors come straight overhead. And just like in Iceland, the stronger solar storms tend to produce red colors, or red columns that go higher up into the atmosphere. We didn’t see all these reds as often in the years past. This definitely feels like a newer phenomenon.

What KP level do we usually see the northern lights in the Adirondacks? 

(Editor’s Note: The KP index, which ranges from one to nine, is a measure of geomagnetic activity in the Earth’s atmosphere. The higher numbers indicate more activity and are one of the factors used by aurora chases to determine if there will be northern lights. The KP index is also one of measurements used by popular apps used by aurora hunters.)

I used to use (the KP index) as a metric to know when to go out, and I was waiting for a minimum KP of five on a dark night. However, I’ve learned a lot by following other photographers, and I have learned from Jeff Nadler and this Facebook group called Aurora Hunters New York, which I highly recommend.

To see the auroras in the Adirondacks, (you need) more than just a KP number. You have to look for a negative BZ value (which indicates the Earth’s magnetic field is pointing south), and you need to look for a higher solar wind speed, so faster particles, and then you also have a higher density of the particles. And that comes from a coronal mass ejection, CME, so you have a lot of particles coming fast at Earth, directly hitting those magnetic fields, and basically you stack the deck in favor of overcoming the protective field of the Earth, which is a good thing. You kind of need all those factors to align in order to get through the magnetic field. So those are more accurate than just a KP number, especially for latitudes down here. So if it’s a KP six, but it’s a positive BZ value, there’s no point in going out. You’re probably not going to see anything. 

What advice do you have for people who are just starting out?

It depends whether you have moonlight or not. On a dark night, no moon, your standard settings would be high ISO, like something like 5000 ISO, anywhere from about 25 to 30 shutter speed and then you need a large aperture, so letting more light in meaning 2.8 or larger, as F4 is still not quite large enough. All those settings are helping you to maximize the amount of light coming in. As the aurora gets more active, then you can decrease your shutter speed time down to 10 seconds, 15 seconds. You can lower your ISO, maybe down to 3200 or something like that. Generally you can always shoot at 2.8, you don’t have to shoot at a (wide open) aperture for more depth of field, because everything you’re shooting for the night sky is at infinity. So you can auto focus on any sort of artificial light source, and then switch it to manual (focus). You don’t have to keep focusing on every new image you take. For moonlight shooting, you would have a lower ISO, and you would have a faster shutter speed. 

Also, pay attention to resources like the Facebook groups. That is kind of a crowdsource way of getting some information. Of course, there are apps that you can use as well. They basically give those same graphs of what’s going on with the KP index, what’s going on with the BZ value and the solar wind density. The other thing is, I find that sometimes the aurora apps have a probability (predictor) to see the aurora. That is pretty much worthless.

You should also have a plan of where to go. Select areas that are generally north facing, away from light pollution. Weather-wise, it tends to be clearer in the southern and southeastern Adirondacks than it does up here (in the northern part of the park). Then also, I do use cloud cover apps.  

(Editor’s note: Photographers should take the shutter speed and aperture suggestions as a starting point and adjust them according to the current conditions. Faster shutter speeds can be used during brighter auroras, even on moonless nights, and can also be used to capture some of the movements of the lights. Smartphone users should turn off their flashes and use a slow speed such as three seconds, five seconds, or 10 seconds. )

What equipment do you use, including lenses?

I have a 15 to 35 millimeter lens and that’s an RF lens, a Canon RF 15-35 and that’s a good lens. You want to have a wide angle — anything from 14 to 24 millimeters — when you’re doing night sky photography, for doing the Milky Way, for doing star trails, for doing auroras. 

Could you tell me what draws you on an emotional level? What makes you go out there to try and capture these lights?

That’s a good question, and it’s not easy to put in the words, but there are a few factors. So I’m definitely bitten by the bug. …On a deeper level, it’s witnessing one of those special moments in nature. As a photographer, I am drawn and I’m passionate about finding and witnessing and recording special moments in nature that most other people will miss out on or bypass or not appreciate, and aurora hunting is that same ethos except taken to the next stage or the next level by throwing in one more level of difficulty, one more level of technical challenge, one more level of time somewhere around the dark and the cold, one more (experience) of less common.