Rovaniemi 2023
Friday 10 march
Due to a system failure there are no images at the moment
Today the 13th time that I go hunt the Aurora Borealis started.
I had some trouble with the entrance to the train station but, though that seemed to have cost me a lot of money, it all worked out fine in the end. Advise taken: dont show your e-ticket as an e-ticket from a phone which forces its electronic payments before the reader gets a chance to evaluate your QR-code.
Anyway... I arrived at the airport without any further hassle and that is where the stressfull part of the journey ended. The airports and flights are the ultimate way of relaxing. I'm tired. really tired and for the first time I did nothing during my two flights but close my eyes and try to sleep. That didn't really succeed as the noise is way to loud but I managed better than ever before. I have noise cancelling earphones but they were in my bag in the overhead bin and I should have taken the time to get them out.
The airport at Helsinki is maturing with a not too fast but secure pace and is looking better every year. This time the area to move around has almost doubled and cashiers are still there but do it yourself payments are spreading like mushrooms. And ofcourse there had to be chocolate... I mean like... one cannot do without groceries. In Rovaniemi one of my suitcases emerged labeled by security, they suspected my luggage of containing lithium batteries no doubt. In fact there was one but it is mounted in my flashgun so no problem.
The airport bus is running in daytime only. I had to find that out as normally I would have been picked up but this year that was not an option. That set me back by 28 euros instead of 7... outch...So I reached my final destination around 19.00 and Started to prepare for the evening. I was picked up at 20.45 and stars were showing but the weather forecast wasn't very stable and as three weather systems collide over southern Lapland the forecasts are valid at issue time only. At the safari office I found a new sign in the street carrying my photo from 2015 and to my really big surprise there is a huge banner inside with a photo of myself on it!
There was a bit of light when we left Rovaniemi but it vanished so the normal first stop we used to assess the sky, found nothing worth while and moved on. At the destination in Kätkävaara we setup at the river instead of on the hill. That was a bad decision as a slight fog and som clouds were coming in and climbing the hill would have added to overcome that. The light now hid behind the fog and was showing just faintly to the trained eye and from the hill that would have been way better is my assessment.
Saturday 11 march
The day began with an awesome breakfast. Well... by my definition anyway.
I picked up my routine as that is what feels best to me and after breakfast started off with processing photos. That is to say... just one. The fog made me push the Lightroom limits to dig out of the RAW file what was buried deep inside it. It finally produced the photo at the top of the Friday section in this blog. In the afternoon Iwent into town to go by the safari office, get my food and some groceries. he photography shop always draws my attention. I can't help that, it's a bloody toy shop to me... And in the window was this cleaningset specifically for Zeiss. Now that was something that I missed on my checklists so I was very happy to find that here.
Part of the groceries is instant cocoa drink... I mean like... one cannot do without cocoa... And whenever in the supermarket I hunt for the Lady Green Tea. There have to be 5 at least for me and I promised my second daughter in law Melanie a package so I need 6. 2 down 4 to go... Once back in my apartment I started converting my blog structure. I wasn't to happy with the one I had used so far so I activated the essay module in my website software and started building. That took more time than expected as the explanation was way to complicated. But you arre reading from the results and I am quite happy with it. And as there was no Aurora tour this evening I spend my time perfecting the process of handing over photos from my iPhone directly and indirectly to Lightroom and the process of managing and publishing. Taking photos and editing and processing is one thing. Managing an publishing requires different skills and insights if you want it consistent and fast accessible.
Sunday 12 march
Hidden treasure
This day started like any. So the first two photos just for illustration and a Nordic view and the third is what we do when we wait for the Aurora to appear :-)
The day brought nothing special and for quite some time it looked like there was no tour again but late in the afternoon a couple booked the evening and the sky suddenly cleared. So another night was certain. It was crystal clear and the moon stays under the horizon for the next days. But the sky was empty and stayed that way until we reached the top of the hill and the cameras were picking up a very distant arch of northern light. A check on parameters revealed a KP1 so we had nothing to expect. Just occasionally my peripheral sight picked up a faint glow but that was it. The cameras showed distant green so nothing to expect from that as well.
Boy could I be wrong...
On our way back we stopped at the first stop as I saw a sudden rise in activity that was visible to the bare human eye and the clients finally got their money worth. To give you an impression of required technique: this was done with an iPhone 13 Pro Max. But this did close the night.
Well... I do have to say that though not high quality... this definitely has a charm to it. I like the paint-ish effect!
Monday 13 March
Treasure revealed
After breakfast at a different table than 'my own' I downloaded the files from the night not expecting anything as the lights were faint and extremely far away. But as I said... Boy could I be wrong... As expected Lightroom couldn't make anything of the stitching needed to fuse two files to one panorama. Lightrooms technique is in this aspect very limited. For this purpose I had downloaded a trial of PTgui Pro. A lot of money but is it expensive? I already had some images stitched and is was promising but images with nothing more than a bunch of stars? Now stars have one positive thing: they don't move and occupy fixed places, well in a humans lifetime anyway. So my expectations were high on this and that payed off. The image stitched perfectly but two images originating each from another camerabody results in slightly different colours and densities and vignettes due to different lenses as well. That all was solved in a great manner resulting in some vignette fusing which has to be addressed in Lightroom. After trying that I decided to go thru the purchase to get rid of the watermarks an be able to save the file in high quality.
So have a look at the result at yesterdays entry. In the Aurora there is blue. Now that is worth mentioning because blue is rare, never this big, never this clear and never in that place as it belongs on top of the lights. This blue is situated over the area of Kiruna in Sweden and that is no coïncidence. In Kiruna a lot of experiments are done with the effects on and of the Aurora. This must be the remanence of an earlier experiment because the one from 12 march, the launch of a special rocket, was scrubbed.
The evening brought clouds and a bit of light behind them. The parameters showed very little activity so nothing much was to be expected and beside a hint of an arc of light thru the clouds there was nothing more.
Don't be fooled by these two pictures... the snow deck is some 75cm thick.
Tuesday 14 March
Massive lights behind stubborn clouds
The software for this blog still refuses to take images so I started a search. I found other thing to fix but of course not the cause of the main problem. Nothing else to do than report it and the developer took it on immediately. Faults will always show and occur but quality shows in how they are managed and The Turning Gate does a very good job in solving problems with Backlight, the software that makes the website. All this took a lot of time and I ended up around 15.00 hrs to go into town.
A visit to the Safari Office made clear that clients were booked and that the weather forecast had changed dramatically. Kätkävaara should be clear this night which made me change my plan of staying home. So I got my food and some other groceries and went home to prepare for the night.
On the first photo you can clearly see where the lighting of the city ends as it reflects from the cloud cover. The other two show my setup to get the panoramic shots in sync because of the movement of the Aurora. And yes those white streaks are snowflakes. Right before being picked up the forcast began to decline slightly. In the weather system over southern Lapland that is no exception but it does keep you on your toes. As we drove to the south the clouds stayed in place way more than I liked and had experienced many times before, this didn't feel very good and a brief stop at the usual place showed opaque black sky with no way to tell anything about the cloud base. That is bad news as that means that the layer is thick.
At arrival the forecast had lost 1 hour to the cloud version and a quick camera scan of the clouds was showing green like fresh grass in spring... bright as a search light. Once on top of the hill I set up my gear against knowing better but with hope that the hill would again perform its proverbly magic: open the clouds by the wind if at any chance possible. But there was hardly any breeze. The forecast was now rapidly declining and as all the others were out on snowmobiles I was on my own and keeping the fire alive awaiting their return. Normally this wouldn't be done but I know the hill and the Kota and Teepee so I consider myself at home and enjoyed the peace and quiet until they got back.
Wednesday 15 March
Tricked by the predictable unpredictability of the weather
There isn't much to tell about this day. I seem to have lost sharpness. Missing that edge and that flow that I used to get into when I'm here. Though 2022 brought me many good things it also layed a strain on me for several reasons. And being autistic amongst other things, those more negative issues put in more weight as they disrupt me. On top of that huge energy leak my buddy and senior Northern Lights Guide Anthony is ill and can't come to work and that... takes away a major part of the fun. I can deal with having not so many friends, a part of autism, but the ones I do have are very dear to me. I can hear him say: 'Oh well... we get what we are given...'
The forecast was bad. No... it was very bad. So bad that even Veli, the owner of the safari company had hs doubts about the evening. Count in that there were no cliens up until around 15.00 and we took the chances for the night to go on nil. Before i got home het texted me that 4 people had booked this night and just after getting home 3 more were added... that was odd. The forecasts showed no improvement yet but as the evening neared it began to change a bit.
The stupid thing is that I always tell all clients that if there is any chance at all on a hole in the clouds you have to go to Kätkävaara as the sky had opened so many times there where other places kept closed. It is that microclimate of that particular hill. And now, even after consulting many different forecasts I made the classic mistake... I stayed home as I saw that if there was to be an opening it should be over Rovaniemi. And I have this one dear and old wish... shooting the Aurora over the city. So was I stupid? Was i filled with hope? I took my chances as forecasted because what was projected as opening sky could easily be closed as could closed sky be open. The forecasts here are valid at the moment they're issued and 15 minutes there after.
I packed a skeleton version of my gear and went for a 20 minute walk to the railroad bridge which gives me a city skyline and a north to northwestern sky, the home of the Aurora. By the time I got there the sky to that direction was about 4/8 open and getting clearer... in the east... that isn't necessarily bad as the Earth spins to the east and the light can appear there as well. In the northwest however the sky was closing to 5/8 and right before it came to 6/8 I found an arc of the Aurora very faint behind some thin clouds. At first I thought it was a reflection from a lamp post in my lens but after having that blocked out the arc stayed there. But was it what I was hoping for... no. To far, to faint, to many clouds. And that closed the session as even that bit of light vanished. And I just couldn't find the energy of staying there waiting for the clouds to re-open, something that was not very likely to happen as the radar and satellite told me at that moment.
But the evening wasn't over yet. Contact with Anthony at the Swedish border and Veli near Kätkävaara gave me a pretty good picture of what was really going on in the sky and some 20 minutes after getting back home the lights returned from the north-east, where it was still far more clear. I went outside and took a test shot... bingo... Behind the Guesthouse is a construction site for new apartments and right behind a huge crane Aurora was performing her dance. I shot some 60 images which I now have to process for the city light correction that goes beyond that of my filter and that compose that into a timelapse.
Thursday 16 March
Blog gets going again
Now when I use a phrase like Blog gets going again as a subtitle for the day you can tell that dullness was the word for that day. Correct. It was. Well apart from meeting Santa for the 2nd time in my life, this time grabbing each others beards. He has a downtown office at the moment so you can run into him. He lives in Rovaniemi and when you post a letter to Santa At The Northpole it WILL actually end up with him here.
Some days have little to offer and this was one of them. The forecasts were to good to be true. And they were. The lights should shine bright at midnight with a KP5. And they should. The clear sky was postponed every hour which made the forecasts be true to them selves in being valid at the moment of issue and 15 minutes there after. The utter frustrating part is that this inpredictability is so predictable and the unreliability so reliable. Therefore, mathematically, the Finnish weatherforcasts are reliable aren't they? Anyway... to cut a short story even shorter... it sucked.
So I present to you the best image of the night just before the retreating clouds opened yet another offensive:
The light you see at the edge is from a city in the north to northwest, probably Pello the bright orange spot at the horizon, being transported thru layers of clouds and dissipating from the humidity of the clouds rim.
Friday 17 March
The meteorological mumbojumbo
It was exactly 8 years ago that an enormous outburst made the Aurora visible all the down the planet in Slovenia!
After breakfast I started my daily routine of charging batteries and downloading and processing all files from the night and writing my blog. My process flow could still be better and I took it a step further into automation of transporting, storing and backing-up. Then while writing my blog my phone rang. "Are you in there? I'm at your doorstep!". Anthony! We have been friends since we met in January 2014. He lives on a farm in Pello near the Swedish border. The Legendary Man With The North Facing Outdoor Toilet. The moment he stepped in made all missing pieces fall together. Why? Well autistic people do have feelings and specifically for patterns, and when an aspect of a complicated pattern misses it derails you. I have few friends and he is definitely one of them. We both have a passion for the Aurora but he is the lucky one to have made it his job. He is the senior Guide for the Northern Lights Tours for Lapland Welcome. Am I jealous? Hmmm... yes and no. Yes because he gets to see them whenever they are there but no because it is impossible to be a good guide and concentrate on professionally photographing them at the same time, not to my standards anyway.
We were discussing wha the Aurora was doing, what the sun was doing and why changes in patterns were there. I will setup a page about the technical mumbojumbo of the astronomical aspects and facts about he Aurora but for now I won't bore you with that.
A usual I went into town when Anthony had left and I got my food. I dropped by the safari office and we discussed the parameters for the eveing, mostly the meteorological ones as they seem to be and stay the big bad basterd for the tour. But having had that failure of last Wednessday I was reluctant to stay home. Needing to know what I am up against I kept an eye on the weather satellite and saw that the immense cloud cover showed some thinner spots. But they were still over the middle of the Gulf of Bothnia and however moving to the north-east they did that very slowly. On the map the rectangular shape is the sky that is important because it is where we see the majority of the Aurorae, the star being Kätkävaara and the arrow the wind direction.
Those grey-ish spots were intriguing because I know what Kätkävaara can do with/to them. So I decided to go on with the tour. Bed time. Some 75 minutes later... alarmclock. Glance at the weather app with one half open eye. 1 second later. Descending from the ceiling and stuffing both my eyes back into their cases! The forecast which had been very stable for the last 24 hours (quite unique) showed an opening sky in the tours time window! Packing mumbojumbo, leaving half behind as a small oping wouldn't be of interest for panoramic shots and IF so I can do it with one camera if I have to. It is just a bit more difficult. Clothing mumbojumbo, checklist mumbojumbo and out into the open where the company car was already waiting for me. At Kätkävaara the sky had opened significantly up to 2/8 or 3/8 and a good bunch of stars was visible through a haze. But that is very much ok after a closed deck because the Aurora would be visible through that haze. Unfortunately the deck was closing again at the moment the lights came. The photo had to be stretched and forged into something that finally showed what it looked like-ish because clouds were to thick at places so a full reconstruction was not possible. My files and software are awesome.
The second photo was the last check on our way home but the only thing that was (hardly) noticable was the place behind the thick cloud where the brightest of the Aurora was hiding. The white in the lower right corner are the city lights of Rovaniemi at 40 km.
Saturday 18 March
Snow ploughs playing Aurora and display deceivement
Let's skip a morning of usual stuff and go FastForward to the evening. The forecast was stable and that is inviting enough. The sky was to clear to 4/8 around 23.00 until 02.00. That is exactly the time window we need. By the way: the cloud cover is measured in 1/8 parts so 4/8 obviously represents either a cover of clouds filling roughly half the sky or a 50% haze or a combination of that resulting in the loss of half the sky in any case. So I was ready to go and waiting for my pickup at 20.45. Which appeared at 21.15. The change in time never reached me... But finally on our way south for our 65-ish km drive to get some 56 km away from the lighting of streets and cities. Well... that was the plan. Sometimes plans don't do what they are supposed to do and this was to become such a memorable night.
We didn't stop along the way. It was useless as the sky was closed. Payed attention? Yes the cover was 8/8. And snow was falling in more or less well amounts hence we just drove on. At the basecamp there was this shining cloud and it slightly moved. However there was something to it that made me wonder. This didn't look like an aurora but it had its characteristics... So I took my iPhone and took a shot. No definite result. Better needed so a real camera had to do the job. The sky was green as grass in spring! I was baffled by the fact that one cloud was way brighter and had made me wondering. Why that bright cloud? The explanation was that it wasn't a cloud but a crack with thinner cloud amongst the thicker ones. And the Aurora could get more of her light through that crack. Later at home when the iPhone shot came to life in Lightroom it clearly showed this. The iPhone shoots in RAW and even it's superb screen couldn't get that green out of that file into the open. This phone has amazed me and it continues to do so. Oh and I'm waiting for that roof snow hanging out there to break off. It grows day by day...
Jordy, who was this evenings guide, took me up the hill by snowmobile for more than my convenience. The thick layer of snow makes it impossible to climb the hill just like that so the weight of the snowmobile, two persons and two heavy backpacks (mine is 15kg) had to compact the snow and cut a clear path to walk on. Below the way I guarantee stability for my tripod: Snowshoes for tripods hence the big hole in the snow.
For the next hour photography was not advisable due to the falling snow. We could look around us because of the light of the Aurora coming through the clouds. The something odd occurred. The clouds lit up and the light moved and quite drastically. Again it did and did not look like the aurora behind the clouds. I have seen that quite a few times before but only with thin clouds. I took a shot but only got white, no colour at all. We were either whitnessing some strange form of Aurora or forresters at work but the latter ones lights are different in behaviour. Then it became clear to me that the only left possibility would be the snow ploughs clearing the roads. And a little later their growling engines sounded on the road below the hill. Their lights are utterly bright because they move fast so the light pollution they cause is ruining every assessment of the sky. It was only in Lightroom that I could see that he Aurora was still there. On the second image you see the surroundings without the light pollution and the lack of the greenish/cyanish colours of the washed out Aurora on the first image. On the second one you can even see the orange-ish effect from the city lighting. The big white spot on the first one is the reflection of the snow ploughs.
Just to illustrate how light works and deceives you: the next image is from a photo in darkness, darkness to your human eye. The camera accumulates the light and uses all of it instead of refreshing like an eye does.
These fine nuances are not visible on the back of your camera. And that mislead me for a third time that night. The last photo I took was from a hole in the sky through which a bit of light showed. But is was in the direction of Pello city lights. That is shown on the photo of last thursday so i thought of those city lights again in combination with some remnants of the setting sun. The latter being impossible as it is not late enough in March to see that at this time in the night. Processing the shot in Lightroom however showed unmistakeable the Aurora... so an excuse to the clients for misinterpreting this. Guys and girls... you DID see the lights even though hardly visible to the naked eye.
Sunday 19 March
FINALLY!
Nothing special happened in the morning except for finding trails of a hare or rabbit and a squirrel. Now that is quite common here but... the were at my doorstep! A doorstep, by the way, that has the arctic circle on it as well! So a bit of excitement after all and added with an excellent pack of Finnair Blueberry Juice simply available in the K-Market around the corner. Match that KLM!
The evening had this doubtfull sky as it has had for the last 10 days. A window of half open clouds should be possible so with that in mind we drove off to the wilderness. And then you get this perfect example of how volatile the weather in South-Lapland can be. At our first stop the sky was closed and I saw a vague arc of just a tiny slightly more bright clouds. If that was to be the lights we could do absolutely nothing with this so continuing the journey was our only option.
The second stop has an open field to the north by northwest and the moment I got out of the car it was clear to me but I had to make sure that the lights were right on top of us and... the sky had opened to 5/8. Now bare in mind that this stop is no more than at most 10 minutes and som 8 km from the first stop. It is that quick that the weather changes. The camera however spoke the redeeming word: Aurora! This is why we make that many stops on our way. It is very well possible that this is what you are going to get and skipping those stops may rob you from that one and only chance in you life. And... it was. The lights retreated and didn't show anymore.
In the album with daily images of this date you will find the full set worth publishing. There are many of the 2nd phase so going thru them will give you an impression of their action. A full description of what you see is on that page.
Monday 20 March
Average to good lights in a better than expected sky
But first thing to do was congratulating my youngest son with his 31st birthday?????? And as shown I found the pop-up menu with smileys??. Oh well. They're mostly shown everywhere but now I got them here too... The day brought no special things except for some more streamlining of my file processing so let's skip that.
The weather has been looking very well for this night AND there was and still is a stable forecast so hope for a clear sky is growing. At our first stop the camera picked up a faint and distant Aurora and we took the opportunity to shoot a group photo. The ongoing challenge with making portraits against a backdrop of stars is to get them both in focus. Just a matter of mastering the zonefocus technique and this is what you get:
We went on to the basecamp and guide Mikko dropped me of by snowmobile at the higher part of our viewing point where I have a better view and where the clients keep out of my shooting field. The light was still there where we had seen it at the stop so I set my gear up, activated the timer and a heating element to keep at least the batteries of the timer and the transmitter on temperature and left it to do its thing: shoot a timelapse in panaromic view with two cameras.
The light was not impressive and going on with this timelapse recording could have been stopped right there and then but on the other hand... I wanted to test my Macbook Pro to see how it will handle this much files of this size. It will absolutely but how fast? If tomorrow night delivers to its weather forecast I want to know if any problems arise.
It wasn't until we made our first stop on our way back before anything exciting would happen. I got out of the car and it couldn't be mistaken: the show was on! Some 16 people gazing at the sky at -19.5 Celcius which no one seemed to notice. Auroras parameters weren't exceptional so she had to do what she does bij the speed of the solarwind only. She pushed out a short brighter burst and then took it more easy while she laid herself across a third of the sky.
Tuesday 21 March
A forecast and a laptop that lived up to theirselves
I spent the day with processing my 920 photos from the night. I was curious how my new laptop would plough itself through this job. The amount of files is not that much of a thing but converting the RAWs to TIIFs and denoising them is a completely different story. I had spend very many hours on selecting the physical size of the machine and which processor to have. I came out on the combination that would be as quiet as possible but also has the best heat dissipation with the longest endurance without use of the fan and the least thermal throttling. It had finished that in around 2,5 hours expanding to 290GB. Then select a few first interesting looking shots to build the panoramic image from two files. This results in a straight image with the two combined 76 degree viewing angles to one 120-130 degree view. I can now finally get the whole Aurora in one image. Drawback? Nah… the panoramic file takes from 650-ish MB to 1-ish GB??. Each.
My goal is to take these 290 files, split off a few loose ones, and stitch them together to these panoramics and then build them into a time lapse. Hence the space and processor in my computer and the very fast external disks. But that is something to do later on.
The weather forecast for todays evening and night had been stable for three days which is quite remarkable. It promised a mighty fine sky until the late morning or early afternoon when one small cloud appeared on 01:00. That worries because it can mean that that spreads quite quickly over the other hours so I kept a eye on that fearing the worst.
The evening showed clouds for half the sky at first but that was according to the forecast but it still was putting a tension on my last night. Having left the city however, the sky cleared. The first stop was i direct hit. Not very energetic but worth waiting for and as we had to wait for the second group to catch up this was a good opportunity to get a camera out and do some improvised panorama shots. The second and third stop were not interesting so after a quick glance we decided to move on to the basecamp.
Second guide Dimitrios took me up the hill with the snowmobile to my ‘private’ observatory where I setup my gear. I started the timer and the electronics took over. Time to get a hot chocolate and to warm a sausage. Wel warming wasn’t the precise term. Dimitrios had built a fire to make a blacksmith happy so both the sausages and the clients got well done??.
The light that began quite enthusiastic when we got at the top of the hill was retreating and just glowing there in the ordinary arc where it always is. Sometimes in the very far distance there was an extra short living activity but that was it and at 01:00 we descended to go home with the remark that stopping on the way home would be an option. But when we left the basecamp after changing from company overalls to own clothing we saw that the Aurora had gained energy. What now? This could be interesting… We decided to go and make an extra stop on a spot we usually skip as it is close to the basecamp. And that proved to be wise and payed off by a good clearly visible performance where the green could be seen with the naked eye. We sat it out until it finally got weaker after some 10 minutes and went on. The next two stops were far from interesting and so we left Aurora in her dark sky when we returned to the street lighting of civilization.
Wednessday 22 March
The end of this journey
Sadly because of way less photos than hoped for proving that hope is a delayed disappointment. But it is good to go home to Inge. I will definitely go back next March and there is a slight possibility that it may happen this September together with Inge. That will be much more like a vacation so delivering images to Lapland Welcome will stay a thing to do but this blog will probably be decimated if written at all.
I will inform about the progress of the time lapses on my Facebook Photography page as will I whenever I have written something interesting here on my website. For now: thank you for following this blog and till the next one. My flight is about to land on Schiphol, Amsterdam Airport.✈️??
Epilogue
Dedication, preparation and Inges Gastronomics
Preparations started in already in may 2022 and went on the whole year with selecting photographic accessories, new computer hardware and software and solve synchronization problems up until my departure only two weeks ago. Refining the needed techniques is what lays ahead to do it faster and smoother and better next year. For this years journey to succeed I put in a lot of afford to really master the technique and the software to produce a longer duration time lapse in panoramic view. Now I just need time to process the roughly 2100 shots that will grow to some 5000+ during the process. That should have been at least 10.000 but clouds just got in the way and that is just that Lapland weather. My good friend Anthony always says: "yeah well... we get what we are given...".
My three specific characteristics ADHD, Asperger (Autism) and giftedness come together remarkably well in my activities and my friends there and that specific combination makes me thrive like nothing else does. People over the whole planet follow me on my Facebook photography page and website. That makes me proud and I thank you all for doing so. I don't make money with it. I just hope you can enjoy what you maybe can't afford yourself and I hope to help you out with outer info on my website like how to photograph the Aurora yourself. If that works out, that's my main reward. That being said... of course it is possible to buy luxury framed prints. Use my contact page.
Suitcases unloaded and everything back in its place or the wash bin. My Aurora Borealis travels will go on. How long? I can't tell. I am 60 years old now so for the near future I see no reason to stop. Lapland and the people I have met have become good friends and as I don't have too many of them I cherish what I have maybe more than others would do.
Inge Though doing this once or twice a year was a condition for living together I am not taking for granted that Inge accepted that. She encourages me, supports me and even puts up with me in this passion and even shares it to the extend that she can grasp all the technical mumbojumbo. Because this is all about astro physiological science that even full blown astrophysicists don't fully understand. Now if there is something I value it is food. Inge is a fantastic cook. She'd make you eat a turd believing it is a delicacy and there she makes that awesome connection from astronomic to Gastronomic❤️. Love you??