Aurora at Jökulsárlón

Description

Nightfall at the glacier lagoon, where ice meets stars and time suspends itself. The aurora danced across the sky, for a liminal moment, painting Earth’s atmosphere, showing us something that is so rarely seen.

Hear the behind the scenes story about this image:

Read the behind the scenes story – audio transcribed:

When I shot weddings something quite fortunate unfolded in that I got approached to shoot in Iceland, and I would shoot weddings and proposals and engagements in Iceland, and then I would try and travel there as much as I could, after the shoot. And sometimes my shoots were in this direction as well. So Jokulsarlon is maybe a 5 to 6 hour drive from the airport, so it’s a really long way to get. But it is just the most beautiful, serene place, this iceberg lagoon.

And it’s somewhere that I’ve always wanted to try and capture the Aurora. Because I just think that foreground, then, with the magic of the universe kind of jazzing up the night sky, is something that I’d always, always wanted to see. And because of the the travel I’d done with work, I had had the opportunity to try, several times.

And I’d got there and it would be snowing, or I got there and it would be raining, or I got there in the clear skies that were meant to be were just cloud. Or I was in an extreme weather warning that I only got so far in the journey, but didn’t make it all the way. And there had just been attempt after attempt after attempt to try and get the Aurora there.

And the reason I was so obsessed about capturing it there was because it’s the first place I ever caught the Aurora, but I didn’t really understand what I was looking for. I didn’t get a really sharp focus on the, the stars because astro night photography was completely new to me at that point and so I’d got this tiny little glow. It wasn’t actually very strong Aurora, anyway, I now know that. But I couldn’t believe that there was Aurora there. And I was thinking, kind of, did I miss shooting it because I didn’t know what I was really doing at that point? And this was back in 2014. So it’s like the first time ever I’d caught the Aurora, and I was somewhere that was so iconic and I hadn’t really realised, it was behind quite a lot of cloud thought, so I let myself off.

But I hadn’t gone over it. It was somewhere I really wanted to take a shot. And finally on this trip in 2019, the the so everything was aligning. It looked like a very clear sky. The aurora looked like it should pick up enough before the almost full moon rise and we made it to the lagoon and we had the most incredible display display pick up.

And I love this shot, because the rising moon just clips all the icebergs with some light and paints it across the glacier, in the mountains, in the distance. And so it allows you to see that foreground in the image, which you don’t always get with night sky photography. Quite often in particular, has no moon. The landscape is very much a kind of blacked out silhouette and then the sky is dazzling. So I really love the balance in this image of the fact that because the Aurora was quite strong, it was overpowering what was then quite a light night sky because the moon had risen, but then the moon hadn’t risen so much that it was like a nuclear glow in the sky. But it was still this softer, more orange light that it was casting and it just gave that foreground which was so magical.

The other hilarious thing is that we were stood in the dark shooting this and the, there are four of us there on our trip, and another group appeared and were kind of like, hey guys, do you mind if we join you? Kind of like, any room for three more. 

I got chatting away and my friend was chatting to the guys more because I was kind of, like really focused in on what I was doing. I was thinking, I’m not gonna mess this moment. This is like the dream moment and they were chatting away. And then there’s another company locally that I follow who then had tagged in that they were flying with this photographer. I was like, oh my goodness, I know them, I follow them, I love their work. And then we started looking at their work. And my brother, who is 14 years younger than me, clocked that they tagged in a film star, and that they’d been travelling with them.

And it turns out that the person that was travelling that had rocked up with us was guiding them. And, we were then stood next to those two people watching the icebergs and it was one of my brother’s favourite, favourite stars. And so it was just absolutely hilarious to think that, you know, and I love this about nature and Iceland is that we’re all just people and we’re all just there to enjoy a moment.

And when we’re silhouettes in the darkness, these dots, nothing matters. Absolutely nothing about who we are and what we do matters. All that matters is the moment that’s in front of us, that immersion in nature and that transcends everything. And so, for me, that’s what came away from that moment. Rather than any, I actually didn’t know who the film star was either, which I think goes to show why I’m putting 40 Frames for 40 together because it wasn’t particularly relevant for me either in that respect.

But I appreciate for some people why it would be but it was, I just thought it was really hilarious and the, the fact that for me, it didn’t matter who was stood there, it was what was stood and unfolding in front of us, this majestic show that Mother Nature is laying out, and that, you know, reminds us we’re all just these tiny dots and there’s just this universe around us, and all of this is unfolding, and we’re part of it and we get to witness that. So it was just such a magical night and a few kind of random funny stories, from the road thrown in to add to the experience there as well.