Aurora Borealis

Iceland is a scarcely populated arctic island with many wild pristine places to view the Aurora Borealis. Even though the northern lights are active year round they are only visible for 8 months of the year. Do you know why? 

This and other northern lights images will be part of "Transformative North," my fine art photography show hosted by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. The show opens August 28, 2016 and runs through November 6, 2016, with an artist reception and forum on September 18th at 9AM, where you can get the answer to this, and other information about Iceland and arctic Scandinavia.

Ice Caves and Aurora

The bus headed out of Reykjavik with 12 Chinese tourists and 3 Americans with the goal of trekking through a glacial ice cave. I normally try to avoid groups of tourists like the plague, because its hard to get a feel for the personality of a place when its over-run with adventure seekers and travelers. But strangely, on this trek I came to appreciate the good humor and friendliness of the Chinese people in the group, not to mention their creative genius with the selfie. And I enjoyed getting to know a great young couple from Florida who were also photographers.

We pulled into our guest house just before dinner and while waiting for our food, the guide came down and said there is an aurora happening tonight.  Immediately 15 people got up and scurried outside and sure enough, soft green waves of light were starting to swirl above the mountain peak. I had seen the Northern Lights for the first time. It lasted maybe a half hour and then dissipated...different waves of greenish color dancing in the sky. Here are a couple of the nicer images from that night. I have no idea how I got them!