Chasing the Southern Lights: A Practical Guide to Photographing the Aurora

Chasing the Southern Lights: A Practical Guide to Photographing the Aurora

There are photographs you plan for months and still miss, and then there are the ones that find you at 3 a.m. when you were supposed to be asleep. Aurora photography lives entirely in that second category. It rewards the prepared and punishes anyone who decides to call it a night too early. I’ve spent enough sleepless hours chasing the northern lights from the Pacific Northwest that I’ve built up opinions about what actually works out in the field, and when I came across this William Patino tutorial shot in Fiordland, New Zealand, I kept pausing it to take notes.