Well I didn’t really give you all any warning about my trip to Norway (mainly because I booked it on Wednesday and left Thursday), but I went out to the Lofoten Islands on a mission: to capture the Northern Lights.

I’m going to save whether or not I achieved my goal in another post but wanted to get the pictures to you ASAP (you can also follow me on Instagram for more real-time updates).

The first picture (of many) comes from the village of Hamnoy, which is perched delicately along the Reinesfjord.  It’s well known (and well-photographied) for the landscape and for the adorable little red cabins, called rorbuer.  While they used to be used for fishermen during the Lofoten fishing season they’re now mainly rented out to tourists.  The view is great and the composition was obvious so I set up my gear and got after it!

For the photographers: I shot this with my Sony a7rIII and the 24-70 GM lens.  I used the pixel shift mode of the a7rIII to capture the reds as well as I could (modern cameras almost all suffer at capturing the color red).  Although the pixel shift left some artefacting in the water (I’ll composite in water from another shot later) the richness and the subtle variety of the reds made it worth it.

Focal length: 24mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: f8.0
Exposure time: 1.6 seconds (shot four times with Sony Pixel Shift)

Post processing: honestly it didn’t really need much.  I adjusted a few levels and put a slight vignette on the frame, which I felt helped deepen the blues in the bottom left.  The only thing I need to do before making this one print ready is compositing in some water from another frame to get rid of the Pixel Shift artefacts.