Vacation photos and reader comments.

February 25, 2023

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Vacation photos from trip to Alaska to view Northern Lights.

What follows is a personal note and pictures from our recent trip to Alaska to view the Northern Lights. A word of explanation.

One of our dearest friends (and my former law partner) is 100 years old. To celebrate his 100th birthday, he wanted to travel to Alaska to see the Northern Lights. A group of 12 of his friends planned a trip to Alaska in 2020 before the Covid shutdown. The tour was canceled twice due to Covid. In the interim, our friend suffered a fall that limited his mobility, so he was not able to join us. Six of us made the previously planned trip this month.

Our tour was hosted by Bob Berman, an astrophysicist and science communicator. Bob is a regular contributor to Astronomy Magazine and hosts a weekly radio broadcast, "Skywindow", and a monthly, hour-long call-in show on Northeast Public Radio. The tour was run by Special Interest Tours.

Our tour started in Anchorage (3 days), took the Aurora Winter Train (12 hours) to Fairbanks (2 days), and finished in Chena Hot Springs (2 days) and Fairbanks (1 day). On five nights of possible observation of the Northern Lights, only two nights were clear—one night in Fairbanks and one night in Chena Hot Springs. The viewing opportunities were great, although VERY cold (below 0 degrees Fahrenheit). Our days were jam-packed with visits to cultural centers and fun activities.

I provide a few notes regarding the photos below, with a final paragraph for photographers that will likely be irrelevant to most readers who do not intend to photograph the Northern Lights.

It was a fabulous trip. We were blessed with wonderful traveling companions and were fortunate to have met so many readers in Alaska and on the tour.

Enjoy!

Me with Managing Editor in Fairbanks. Interestingly, the city lights of Fairbanks lightened the sky and the clouds, making for a more pleasing composition. The photo below (from Chena Hot Springs) was taken under a darker sky, which presented more challenging dynamic range issues.

To see a fun series of photos that show the waxing and waning of the aurora at the Fairbanks location, see Every Day With Jill, Our First Aurora!

From Chena Hot Springs, standing on an abandoned landing strip.

The Alaska Range from the Aurora Winter Train. Over a twelve-hour train ride, we saw similar views for 8+ hours. I used a mask in Adobe Lightroom to dehaze the sky (which I now realize added a blue tinge to the entire photo—argh!)

The most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed. This photo was taken from the top of a mountain above Chena Hot Springs. The photo does not begin to convey the beauty of the sunset. My camera struggled with the dark foreground and warm hue of the sunset, especially the column of golden light that descended from the clouds to the ground. I lightened the foreground in Adobe Lightroom using a luminance mask and exposure boost.

The Trans Alaska Pipeline. The original photo was a gray blob. I isolated the pipeline, vertical supports, snow, and sky with separate masks in Lightroom to bring out detail that the eye could see at the site, but which was not apparent in the “as taken” photo.

My Managing Editor posing in a classic car at the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in Fairbanks. The museum is a treasure that is tucked away in a mixed-use housing / business park. If you live in Alaska and have not visited, you should! For those familiar with the Nethercutt Museum in Los Angeles (also a must-see) the collection and curation are of equal caliber.

Managing Editor bundled up and enjoying -3 degree F. weather!

A gray day in downtown Fairbanks!

The exterior of the Chena Hot Springs Geothermal Power Generation Station.

My Managing Editor with tour host and astronomer Bob Berman. Bob was a wonderful host and made the trip more rewarding and educational!

Just for kicks—a freighter makes its way across the Puget Sound near Seattle in the late afternoon sun. Taken from about 2,000 feet on approach to SeaTac Airport

Taken from the plane on approach to SeaTac airport. You can see the wind whipping snow off the mountain tops. This is the same storm that is currently lashing much of the Northwestern US.

I have hundreds more photos and have not included images of cultural artifacts housed in museums because I am not certain of the protocol / permissions necessary to share photos of cultural artifacts.

A special note to fellow photographers.

Although I succeeded in photographing the Northern Lights, here is what I would have done differently:

1. I should have rented a wide-angle lens (14 mm). I used 24-70 F 2.8 Sony GMII. Lens speed was not an issue. Three seconds was the maximum exposure I could use before over-exposing the shot. But as you can see, I was only able to capture about 75% of the horizon at 24 mm, which limited the composition in many photos.

2. Using a prime lens instead of a zoom lens would have reduced the possibility of bumping the lens out of focus (which I did, and ruined about 30% of my shots on the second night of observing). Bring painter’s tape to lock down the manual focus on your lens!!

3. Why didn’t I know I had bumped my lens out of focus? Because my rear screen stopped working in sub-zero temperatures and it was impossible to use the viewfinder because I was wrapped in multiple layers of wool, down, and Gortex, which prevented me from getting close enough to use the viewfinder.

4. A remote blue-tooth shutter release was the best investment I made. It allowed me to take hundreds of photos I would not otherwise have captured.

5. Although I used heated glove liners and bought “photographer’s gloves” with access holes for the index fingers and thumbs, it was impossible to operate the camera without occasionally removing my gloves. I used hand warmers from REI (Ignik brand) inserted into my gloves—which literally saved my hands from freezing and allowed me to extend my photography sessions.