A Night To Remember

Friday 18:30 10th May 2024, I had just finished work and began doom scrolling my socials as one does while getting cozy for a night of relaxed playstation after a long working week.

The app on my phone which gives Aurora alerts was pinging as a red alert. Being in the south east of England I had seen this many times before and simply took it as the usual ’too far south to see anything’. However…

… Doom scrolling insta stories and Facebook had many posts exhibiting anticipation and excitement about the impending conditions. This felt different as they were from people around my area, not just further north. I started to listen, and in turn have an internal battle of should I or shouldn’t I.

I sould!! Hell, I would regret it big time if things did kick off. Playstation will have to wait.

I packed my camera bag and decided to head to somewhere high, assuming that would be best, I know of two possibles in my area, Ditching Beacon with its Dew Pond, or Firle Beacon with a lone tree I have been waiting to photograph for some time. The latter felt more appealing as the Dew Pond at Ditching is bit of a walk from the car park.

Fast forward to just before sunset on the hillside of Firle Beacon I proceeded to set up a composition in the failing light, and waited while taking some test shots and progressively testing the lightpainting on the tree as the evenings light gave in to dark.

At around 10:00, I was in the dark of night, and waited with baited breath at what I was expecting to see, at first not much, then a green tinge on the horizon began convincing me that something is happening. or was that just my white balance being off and light pollution from some distant town making it appear green. NO that was GREEN. I began frantically shooting, light painting the tree with an LED light and a torch to create some foreground interest other than a silhouette of a tree.

Then after exhausting this one composition, I began looking for another and also readjusting for what I now perceived where the Aurora was forming. At about 11pm, thing went from great to unbelievable in a very short space of time. Greens, purples red and pinks danced all around me, with such intensity I never thought possible this far south. I bagged many compositions running around, readjusting and lightpainting, phoning my wife to say GET OUTSIDE AND LOOK!

Finally, I thought amongst the chaos I simply also had to savour this rare moment, turn the camera off, lay down on the grass and just look up. OK I didn’t actually turn my camera off, I ran a Timelapse which sadly didn’t amount to anything. But for the next 10 minutes I did nothing but savour the experience as colours danced above me.

By about 11:45pm the Aurora had fizzled out and gave way to just a dark sky with a little wash of pink. I was done. Excitement, adrenaline, naivety I don’t know, I packed up, and drove home excited to process my images. I should have gone back out, or stayed out till the other side of night, where as I understand it things picked up and gave us another equally impressive display.

Though I am thoroughly grateful I got what I got.

Maybe some other time there will be another display as good as this, but one thing for sure is that I am glad I made the decision on this location, as I was the only one there, and as I heard afterwards, the other possible locations carpark was full and there were loads of people at the dew pond. Which I imagine was a great experience and a great sense of community, but I am glad I got to experience this amazing occurrence with just myself and the Aurora.

The following night, chatter on the Internet suggested it’s going off again!

Bodiam Castle this time (why didn’t I think of that the previous night I do not know). Leaving in very good time to secure a parking spot.

I setup before dark, then people began arriving, lots of people. I reckon there were about 20 plus other photographers there with the same motive and same intel. We chatted and shared experiences about the previous nights activity and awkwardly consoled those who slept through it.

Sadly by about 11pm, it was obvious nothing was going to happen, so people began to depart. Disappointing, but a thoroughly good night regardless, with a great atmosphere and camaraderie with like minded people.

You can’t win them all, but you can have fun trying.