By ELIZABETH CHEN
The photographer Ole C. Salomonsen first saw the northern lights while growing up in the northern Norwegian city of Tromso, where the best time to see them is in the cold winter months.
“When I was a child, my parents and my grandparents would tell me that if you wave at the northern lights for too long, they will come after you,” he said.
Today Mr. Salomonsen chases auroras for a living, spending countless sleepless nights waiting to capture them so he can share them with the rest of the world. Right now he’s excited about a phenomenon called the solar maximum, when the sun’s activity is so high that it causes auroras to appear more often and in places where they usually don’t occur. The next solar maximum is expected in 2013, and to call attention to it, he recently released a stop-motion video called “Celestial Lights.”
“I want to make people aware that the sun will cause faster and more aggressive auroras,” Mr. Salomonsen said. “More people will be able to witness the northern lights, not just those of us up north.”
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, occur when the earth’s atmosphere comes into contact with particles from the sun. The earth’s magnetic field then drives these particles toward the North and South poles, which is why the northern lights are normally seen in places like Alaska, Canada and northern Europe.
Ole C. Salomonsen“Arctic Alps.”
But every 11 years, the northern lights can be seen farther south, in places like England or the United States, when the sun reaches its most active phase. At this point of the solar cycle, the north and south poles of the sun flip, and more sunspots and flares occur. NASA scientists predict that the sun will hit solar maximum next year.
Mr. Salomonsen’s video opens with an ominous musical score composed by Kai-Anders Ryan as the camera homes in on a tumultuous sun and its lunging flares.
“I included the solar maximum to put some story to it, to show the eruption of the sun as the source of the northern lights,” the photographer said. “The sun is getting angrier, so the auroras are getting angrier and more dramatic.”
Ole C. SalomonsenTitled “Divine Presence,” this image won Mr. Salomonsen second place in the “Earth & Space” category of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition in 2011.
From October to March, Mr. Salomonsen spent many nights shooting more than 150,000 stills of auroras soaring above Scandinavian mountains and valleys. About 6,000 of these stills went into the production of “Celestial Lights.”
Hunting for auroras isn’t easy. Before heading out, he checks the weather forecast and a university Web site that monitors the earth’s geomagnetic activity, which can predict the level of solar activity on a given night. If there are clear skies and indications of high solar activity, he bundles up, packs some coffee and prepares for a long night of driving and waiting in the dark.
With the video, his main challenge was to show the auroras moving as close to their actual speeds as possible.
While some auroras move as fast as lightning, that is not the norm, Mr. Salomonsen said. “Many tourists who come to see the northern lights get disappointed because they think that’s how auroras move,” he said. “They can move fast, but most of the time, they move very slowly and majestically.”
Although Mr. Salomonsen has been shooting auroras for many years, he did not seriously pursue photography until 2007, when he left his job as an equity broker and started his business, Arctic Light Photo. His work, particularly his two aurora videos, has gathered a wide following: “Celestial Lights” has been viewed 279,000 times in the last month.
Still, he believes the auroras are best appreciated when people venture out and see them for themselves. Although they are present year-round, they are most visible in Norway from December to early February.
“No matter how good a photo or video is, you could never use that to justify not seeing the auroras with your own eyes, if you are lucky enough to get the chance,” he said.
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