After an extremely long day of hiking and photographing in the mountain backcountry, the last thing I wanted to do is stay out late photographing the night sky in the bitter cold. My warm bed was calling my name, yet the realization that I missed the aurora the previous night and the solar forecast was calling for an even better display for this night was just too hard to resist. I re-packed my gear, grabbed the dog, and off we went. As I left my house, I could already see the show was going to be a good one. Even under a veil of city lights, the aurora came to life and danced across the sky. By the time I left the city, I became awestruck with the magnificent display of green waves of light overhead. Tired and exhausted, I only stayed out for an hour. In that time, I’ll admit, I had a struggle to find something to make for a compelling image. These barns aren’t too far from my house and I always wanted to shoot them during the aurora. It was a struggle on site to pull off a compelling image as the barns are further away than I previously thought. With the pasture gated off, I had to get creative and instead of showing the entire night sky and having tiny awkward little barns, I decided to zoom in and go for a more intricate scene. I feel like this image does justice for what I saw that night, even if it’s just a small segment of the night sky.
As the warm sun rises it begins to melt the late-night dusting of snow that fell over the higher altitudes of the Canadian Rockies. This tug of war will soon end as the cooler temperatures win the battle over the coming weeks and set this scene under a deep freeze for half the year.
As a lover of heat it’s rare for me to say I miss winter. As I edited this image however, I immediately had a fond memory of this particular morning spending time with my little girl who was so excited to go out on an adventure with her daddy. As always, she was eager to wake up at the crack of dawn, drive for an hour and a half in pitch black and stand out in the freezing cold with me to take this picture. When we were done shooting we both ran into the truck and cuddled in the back seat of my truck under a blanket to warm up and we watched every little girl’s favourite movie, Frozen on her little Ipad. We ended up both falling asleep and woke up just as the movie ended. I remember the look on her face as we both started to realize we dozed off. The groggy smile on her face was filled with joy as if it was the best day her life while her arms clenched me tighter in a big hug. It’s a memory I will always cherish.
