47.5

There was something so incredibly beautiful about the Northern Lights, I was able to almost ignore the effects of the bitter cold. My adrenaline was driving me to stay focused on capturing the moment - swapping batteries again and again just to milk a few last shots. All in the hopes to come away with captures like this!

This 15 second long-exposure image was taken under the glowing pink and green Aurora Borealis from a mountain peak near Chena Hot Springs, near Fairbanks, Alaska.

So one of the things I found very interesting about the Northern Lights is how long-exposure images actually show the color better than the human eye can see. On a few occasions, our guide Dennis, would check the sky with a long-exposure capture just to see if there was any color (usually green). This would tell us if there was any aurora activity versus just some thin clouds. In fact, to the untrained eye, the faint aurora looks just like thin clouds.