Seeing the Northern Lights is a bucket list item we thought for sure would require traveling further North somewhere to check off. Local photographers have successfully caught the green glow above Seattle on a few occasions but even they admit those captures require long exposures,and little to no visibility with the naked eye.
After downloading an app to help notify us when the chance of an aurora spotting were possible, we decided to take our chances on a few occasions yet failed miserably in any attempts to find a good spot, let alone see or attempt to capture any activity. Tonight though, she came to see us!
We got the alert and jumped in the 4Runner to scope out a few nearby locations to post up for photos. When we started to feel like we were failing again we decided to head home. On one turn through one of our nearby neighborhoods we happened to look up and our naked eyes caught a light glow of light directly above!! We rushed home realizing we would likely be able to see it from our driveway and sure enough, she was there waiting!
We immediately parked and rushed to get the cameras set up, not knowing how much more time we would have. Panic set in while we had to re-remember optimal camera settings we had previously looked up.
While it took some longer exposure (our first attempts obviously) the results on camera were still pretty faint compared to results we see from other photographers but to be fair to ourselves, these represent very well what we were seeing with the naked eye! The deep reddish/purple and green hues were dancing and giving us quite the show!
Not only did we feel lucky to have been visited by such a rare phenomenon right at home, we are glad to have been able to capture it through the lens!
