Northern Lights
The auroras light up the edge of the mountains over Denali Park Village. Just on the other side of the mountains the lights must've been spectacular. UNfortunately by the time I got there the show was over. Luckily I stopped to capture this. I was surprised to see Denali Park Village so dark. This time of the year the hotels are serving the last of the tourist crowd. It would normally be filled with hundreds of people. Instead it was eerily void of people. No cruise ships this year has meant no need for hotels to open near Denali National Park
Usually I wait for the vehicle to pass so that the light from the headlight doesn't mess up my shot. I wanted to try something different. I timed the passing vehicle so that I would capture the light as it painted the spruce trees. It took me a couple of tries. Oh yeah. The northern lights were pretty amazing too. Broad Pass, AK. 1/6/2021
I took this shot right after almost running into this cow and calf. I was still shaking from the adrenaline running through my body. I didn't really have too much time to compose the shot because the momma moose was steadily moving away from me. I knew that I had to get this rare shot of moose with a backdrop with the auroras. So I ran into postition and snapped a quick 4 to 5 shots not knowing if I had my settings correct or not.
My final shot from my little road trip to Healy. I decided to stop at Denali viewpoint south on my way back home this morning. At thime you could just barely make out Denali mountain, but the clouds were in the way most of the time. I was really at this spot for the northern lights. Capturing the milky way in the same shot was a bonus
The last shot I took after a long night of avoiding the clouds. I was able to capture my last glimpse of both the milky way and northern lights before the clouds blocked my view. I used the lights from a passing vehicle to paint my foreground with a quick splash of light. It was 2am. The temperature was 2 degrees. I had a long drive to get back home.
Predictions were pretty good for a big aurora storm for most of this week. The auroras clearly didn't get the memo. I spent two days chasing the northern lights. From my home in South Anchorage I drove 65 miles to Hatcher Pass on Wednesday. No lights. On Thursday night I drove north 219 miles to Cantwell. The reason being that I was trying to outrun cloud cover moving in from the south. Result very minimal aurora activity. I did manage to get this shot before the lights faded away and the clouds moved in. I like this shot because the edge of the clouds had just reached my location. High thin clouds creates a cool halo effect around some of the larger stars. Really making the big dipper really stand out.
Denali, Milky Way, and Auroras
Denali momentarily came out from behind the cloud cover. Just in time for me to capture all three together.