They started off as no more than a slightly light spot on the horizon. But as we watched, the sky became turbulent with light. Its been raining here for the last week and a half, and we had only seen one sunset, and one Aurora. but when Thursday’s forecast came in positive for clear skies all afternoon, we had to jump at the chance. We started with a dip in the Arctic with our friends.

With the water temperature at about 6C, it was pretty freezing, but very refreshing and a great bonding experience (you know, in case living, working, eating, and spending all of our free time together wasn’t enough). Next, Matteo and I completed a project that we had been discussing for a while; building our own tripod, or as Matteo says “Tree-pod”.

After a lot of hand sawing, and shoddy nail pounding, we had constructed a norwegian tripod. We named him Peter after Matteo’s former neighbor who owned a duck.

The lights started off slowly, just little ribbons of light off in the distance, only visible in the southern sky.

Slowly gaining in intensity and color until the full storm broke out.

This was right around the time we discovered we could include people in these pictures, and now I think I might have found my life calling as an aurora-portrait photographer.

It was one amazing night, and Im really hoping for a lot more!!