Northern Lights over the city

Here is a great video of the event filmed by Chris Gardiner from C Gardiner Photography.

Gardiner shot this at Rotary Beach on October 1.

How do you shoot the Northern Lights? Here are Gardiner's tips:

The best way to capture your own images of the Northern Lights is by way of a tripod, or even resting your camera on something sturdy. At night time, your camera will want to take long pictures, so it needs to stay still for your image to be sharp where it should be. For instance; my second camera that was shooting that night, I often set it to the "2-second timer" while it rested on my backpack. you lose control over some of your composition, but at least you have a picture that shows something.

Focus will always be challenging at night time. Use manual focus, and "focus at infinity". This is another technique all together.  Also, don't push your photos to take extremely long exposures like 30 seconds plus is probably too much, the aurora dances, and you want to show that in a photo with texture, long photos will blur their movement/dancing.  

For more info on how to understand and use your camera better, contact Chris at [email protected].

Click here for our previous story on Northern Lights in the Okanagan.