The aurora

The last two nights we had fabulous northern light displays. My photo tour group is in the north of Iceland where the skies are much clearer than in the south, hence we can see the eerie and beautiful aurora borealis. It's not possible to capture good detail in the sky as well as in a landscape due to the discrepancy of exposure, so if you want a picture like this, compositing in Photoshop is required. My exposure for the sky is 13 seconds, f/2.8, and 1000 ISO -- depending on the intensity of the lights. I used a 16-35mm lens. The wind was intense -- gusts could literally knock you over -- so I used the hotel structure to block the wind. I addition, I had to apply a constant downward pressure on the tripod to prevent unwanted vibration. The hardest part about shooting the northern lights is focusing because the night sky is too dark for autofocus to function. You can't simply put the lens on the infinity mark because often that's not really the correct position for critical focus. So, I focused on a distant illuminated window and that worked. This is Godafoss Waterfall near Myvatn, Iceland.