No northern lights for you...

The full-sized version of this image can be found here.

I have this friend. She announced one day that the Aurora Borealis was coming to Northern Illinos, and it would arrive that night around midnight.

So I did some research on photographing the lights at night, and headed out that night to find a place far from Chicago's bright lights. I drove for over an hour to a field by a factory of some sort, that had a very nasty dog guarding it.

I took some test shots, with an exposure of about 30 seconds, and then settled in to wait for the show.

Time passed.

Then time passed some more.

Time was hopelessy repetetive in its dedication to passing. No lights. I was out in that field until past 1am, and then drove home. The next day at work I gave her no end of grief, as all I ended up with were test shots.

Amazingly, I really liked the test shot. The night was very black, and with an exposure so long the sky has a marvelous shade of purple. You can see the beautiful artistry the shot would have created had the lights actually shown and silhouetted that tree. In the lower right you can see the edge of the factory from which the scary dog terrorized me.

-- msd