Lifetime ambition fulfilled?

Last night after many years of trying I finally managed to photograph the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in the UK.

Now I have to be honest from the outset and say that what you see in the photos below is not what I could see with my naked eye.  In fact apart from a brief period where there was an obvious vertical column mostly I spent my time trying to keep warm whilst waiting 2-3 minutes for each photo to be taken and then checking the results and tweaking the next shot a little.

The photos were taken a couple of minutes from my house at Cley in North Norfolk looking north (obviously!) with the Sheringham Shoal windfarm on the horizon. Whilst using the wind turbines to add some interest to the photo it did make me stop and ponder about their place in this beautiful stretch of coast.  The last (and only other) time I saw the Aurora in the UK was from the very same spot about 10 years ago when they horizon was completely dark. This very natural spectacle which has beguiled people for millennia, caused by solar storms and brought to earth in solar winds was all going on over our attempts to harness wind power to help save our planet.  As a photographer I was glad to have something else in the photo on which to help hook the shots but another side of me was sad that the turbines symbolise much of what we have done wrong as a species.  Trust me after four hours of gazing into the sky this is the kind of stuff which comes to you!    

Anyway, on with the photos.  They were taken mostly on 2-3 minute exposures and I really have done very little in post with them, straightened a few horizons and increased the black clipping (for all you togs out there) slightly but thats about it!

So in many respects it was a lifetime ambition fulfilled and in another it left a somewhat bitter sweet feeling that all this was going on above my head but I couldn't see it without my camera.  It also re-affirmed in my mind that a visit to Scandinavia to do them justice will happen in the next year or so watch this space.