Photographing the Aurora Borealis in Sussex

Just wow! What a night of photography that was.

I’ve done a little research (Wikipedia) and as I understand things, we are reaching peak activity in the sun’s 11-year solar cycle. The poles are soon to flip and during this time, there’s an increase in solar flares, sunspots and radiation. This means more solar particles spewing out into space, some of which interact with the earth’s magnetic field, increasing the likelihood of aurora borealis (northern lights) or aurora australis (southern lights).

I already knew we were reaching peak activity in the solar cycle but what I hadn’t anticipated was that we in the southern counties of England would also experience this spectacular celestial phenomenon.

As I finished work in London back on the 10th of October, I was heading out into the city to catch a sunset, but as I sat on the train, I spotted lots of people posting on their social stories about the possibility of northern lights across the UK later that night. Having missed the previous display back in May and clear skies predicted, there was no way I was going to let another chance to photograph the aurora pass me by. So, taking only a moment to decide, I made my way south and away from the bright lights of the city.

Having decided to give photographing the aurora a try, all I needed now was a location. I wanted an interesting subject, away from artificial lights and I needed to face north when taking the photo. It took me a minute as every place I could think of would leave me facing anything but north, but scanning my photo library for inspiration, I decided to head to Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, a familiar place I’ve photographed many times before. Leaving the train, I jumped in my car and made my way there.

I arrived on location around an hour later and it was already very dark. I said hi to a fellow photographer called Lee who was already set up and busy taking pictures before heading to my usual spot to compose this framed view of the castle. It’s not pointing directly to the north, it’s more of a north-westerly direction but I figured if the lights did kick off in the sky, it should still work.

Initially, I was feeling a little underwhelmed (and a bit anxious). As you can see in the first image below, there was a subtle magenta hue in the sky and a very pale green towards the horizon but nothing like the vivid colours I was hoping for. Was this all we would see tonight? The photo below is a blend of two images, one for the sky and foreground to capture those subtle aurora tones and another with the castle slightly illuminated with my head torch.

The conditions were ideal. Clear skies, hardly a breath of wind and with the water still, the reflections were perfect. After 30 minutes or so, another photographer hurried towards us pointing to activity happening behind us to the northeast. Looking the other way and with trees behind us, there was no way we would have spotted it from where we stood. Quickly, we grabbed the cameras and went to find a better vantage point.

Although this new position was facing directly north, the moat was a lot narrower and the castle too close. Even with my wide-angle lens, I still couldn’t include enough of the scene in a single frame, so I needed a different approach. The only way this was going to work was by mounting my camera vertically, levelling my tripod and panning the camera from left to right, taking a stitched panoramic image.

I took 6 vertical pictures, making sure I left plenty of space above the castle to showcase as much of the fantastic display nature was gifting us as I could. I stitched them together and edited the photo later in Lightroom to make the final image you can see above. It’s not my favourite composition of the castle and I would have loved for the aurora to be more evenly spread across the sky but I’m still really happy with the final image.

With the vibrant light most vivid directly above the right-hand turret, I also used one of the individual frames from the panoramic image above and edited it separately to help show off those amazing northern lights above the castle.

While standing face-on to the castle, I noticed that the small area of vivid light towards the right-hand side was very slowly making its way across the sky, meaning the framed composition of the castle I had originally set out to capture might be back on. Off I popped back over to the corner, composed the photo and waited. Towards the opposite side from where I stood, there were at least two other photographers taking pictures, so I decided once again not to throw some light onto the castle just in case it interrupted their shoot. Instead, I would try to bring a little of the castle’s detail back in post by recovering the shadows. In hindsight, I think this was a mistake on my part and I’ll expand on that at the end.

Thankfully, I got the light I was after. It did indeed move across the sky, and I clicked away, taking various photos as the light and colours changed. This is easily my favourite photo of the night. I assure you; those vivid colours have not been enhanced with saturation and vibrance sliders; apart from some basic editing most of the work was done using the white balance sliders by cooling off the temperature and bumping the tint a little.

Confident I had the photo I wanted; I made my way over to the far side of the castle to see how things were looking from there. As you can see, the aurora was still visible but as I was now looking towards the southeast it only partly covered the sky. I actually like the results as the brighter, colourful sky on the left balances nicely against the stronger, dominant castle on the right. Although I’m not sold on the bright blue light in the castle windows (they are growing on me though), I do really like the dim orange glow in the windows closer to the camera. Whatever you or I think of them, collectively they appear to bring life to the castle, giving the impression someone is still living there.

What an absolutely amazing night that was. I am blown away by the photos I was able to make, particularly as it was such a unique event to see the aurora borealis as far south as East Sussex. Who knows when that might happen again?

That being said, it was my first time photographing the northern lights and there were certainly lessons I can learn, most notably not taking more opportunity to cast a little light onto the castle like I did in the first photo above. With just a small amount of light pointed towards the castle, it brought out so much more detail and resulted in much less noise in the shadow areas. I mentioned that if I used my head torch more, I might ruin other photographer’s images but in reality, I’m sure I could have been a touch more selfish and used it a couple more times without causing too much upset.

All in all, it was a great experience, so much so, I’m now tempted to give astrophotography a go. Watch this space.

Until next time

Trevor