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Jasper
In the early morning hours of May 18, 2013 the Earth was struck a glancing blow from a CME originating from an X Class solar flare on the sun. Luckily, I was in a prime location to catch the great show. The video below captures the resulting Northern Lights as they dance above Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada.
The video contains over 1800 photos shot over a period of 4 hours from midnight to 4am on May 18, 2013.
Jasper Provincial Park is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited, I hope you enjoy the video and photos!
Rocky Mountain & Northern Lights
Here we are on Earth Day, and it seemed fitting to make a post celebrating some of the wonders this Earth has to offer; specifically the Northern Lights, and the beautiful Rocky Mountains. For the past three months I have been trying (mostly in vain) to get some photos and a timelapse of the Northern Lights over the Rocky Mountains, but time after time they prove to be incredibly difficult to forecast. On April 13/14 everything finally came together with the arrival of an expected CME and a fairly decent chance of finding a patch of clear skies over night about five hours away in Revelstoke, BC. Not wanting to take any chances this time, I decided to rent a snowmobile, take it up to the top of a mountain for a better vantage point, pitch a tent and spend the night. Although the CME impact was a lot weaker than expecting, thanks to a very dense solar wind A beautiful display of the Northern Lights was still produced!
(click on the vimeo link in the video to watch it in HD)
Northern Lights Data
I decided to make my life easier and consolidate all the data needed to keep on top of Northern Lights activity on one page.
Also, to share that with everyone. So, enjoy! (or else)
Everything here should be automatically updating
Super quick overview of the chart below:
- Bz: negative numbers – good, positive numbers – bad
- Phi: closer to 360 – good, lower – bad
- Density: Higher = Better
- Speed: Higher = Better
- Temp: Can’t really seem to find any good correlation for this – feel free to inform me
Keep in mind, not all factors have to come together at the same time to produce aurora; you can still get a good show even if one or two of the variables are lacking. From my experience, Phi seems to be one of the more important; when its up – more often than not – you are usually getting a sub-storm.
How to photograph lightning: A tutorial
Now that storm season for North America is either already here, or coming soon. I thought it would be a good time for a new tutorial!
In this installment; how to photograph lightning.
Lightning is a very elusive beast that many seem to struggle with, so read on, and by the end you will be able to hunt and capture it like a pro!
What you will need:
- Camera
- Tripod
- Remote shutter control (optional)
- Camera rain protection – See previous tutorial here: http://www.richardgottardo.com/diy-rain-guard/
Lightning: Safety
Obligatory: first and foremost is your safety – lighting is dangerous! Not only lighting but the heavy rain and hail that comes with it, so make sure you are aware and prepared! Environment Canada has a good write-up regarding lightning safety right here http://www.ec.gc.ca/foudre-lightning/default.asp?lang=En&n=159F8282-1 so make sure you read it before going any farther!
Lightning: Finding it
I am not going to spend a lot of time on this part, as it is a never-ending wormhole of information. If you want to get really in depth here is a pdf I threw together sometime last year from various sources on forecasting storms: http://www.richardgottardo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Forecasting101.pdf
To keep this short and sweet, we will assume that you are going by your local weather forecast. Here are two good sites you should know: www.weathernetwork.com and www.wunderground.com. Once you have established that you have a chance at a thunderstorm, www.wunderground.com/wundermap or www.chasertv.com are both great websites for tracking the storm’s progress on radar and getting a better idea of where it will end up.
Lightning: Getting the shot
Once you have figured out where the storm is going to be, it is time to set up and get the shot. One thing many people overlook is trying just to get a photo of lightning itself and ignoring the framing of the shot. Once you know where the storm is, make sure you frame a shot that would still look good even without lightning! This way, once you DO get a lighting strike, the photo will be that much better! It is not advisable to be standing in an open field next to a metal tripod during a thunderstorm; this is where the remote shutter comes into play. Once you have set the camera up, you can set it to shoot continuous frames – then leave it there and wait in a safe location until the storm passes.
A common mistake people make when shooting lightning, is exposing for the scene they are shooting instead of exposing for the lightning shot. Shooting lightning has a LOT in common with flash photography, where the majority of the light in your photo will be coming from the strike itself and not from any ambient light sources. You will want to set an exposure time for between 20 and 30 seconds where a normal shot without lightning will be totally black. The settings I find that usually work for me are around F/7 ISO 100 and 30s for lighting that is very powerful and very close, down to about f/5 ISO 100 and 30s for lighting that is a bit farther off in the distance. You will need to take a few test shots to really dial in the right settings. All of the photos shown in this tutorial were taken at around F/7 ISO 100 30s so this is really a great starting point.
You will want to be using the widest lens available to you, and when framing the shot keep the horizon as low as possible in the photo while maintaining an interesting scene – as most lightning happens in the sky…
As well as setting the exposure manually, focusing manually is also a must! Take a few test shots focusing on something far off in the distance until you have it nice, sharp and in focus – this should get you somewhere near the hyperfocal distance of your lens and allow your lighting strikes to be in focus.
Lightning: Editing
Do your self a favor, if you have never shot a photo using your camera’s RAW mode before – do it now! Because of the unpredictability of lightning strike intensity they will usually require at least some work in post to get them looking really good. Some strikes may be more powerful than others, some weaker, and the camera will rarely ever set the proper white balance for lighting photos. If you are shooting Jpegs, it is much more difficult and not as effective to alter the photos later.
The editing outlined here will be assuming either the use of Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw for Photoshop.
This photo illustrates what you would end up with if you had just shot JPEG instead of RAW with no editing – straight out of the camera. The white balance is way too warm and the lighting doesn’t “pop” as much as it could
Here is the same image after editing. I have attached a screenshot from Adobe Camera Raw below it to illustrate the changes that have been made. One rule of thumb; Lightning ALWAYS looks better with a very “cool” white balance. Something about blue hues and lightning always looks great!
Now here is the same image after a little bit of tweaking in Adobe Camera Raw. Lightroom users can still make the same changes.
The photo looks a lot more vibrant, and the lightning really stands out now. You can see the changes made below. White balance has been pulled way down, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Clarity, and Vibrance have all been bumped up to help make the photo really pop.
Lightning: Stacking
Sometimes if you get lucky, you will have a very active storm and be able to capture a number of lightning strikes from the same vantage point. If this is the case, and you want to really highlight the intensity of the storm, you can “Stack” all these images in Photoshop to show every lightning strike in the same photo. To this, you will need Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Photoshop. If you don’t have bridge, it is still possible! You just need to open all the photos and copy and paste them on top of each other; Bridge just automates this process. We will be doing this method using the four photos below.
In Bridge:
- Import all your photos into Adobe Bridge
- Open one photo into adobe RAW through Bridge and edit it to your liking
- Select all your photos, right click and select “Develop Settings > Previous Conversion” this will synchronize the editing across all your photos
- With all your photos selected, click: “Tools > Photoshop > Load files into photoshop layers”. Depending on how many photos you have, this step can take quite awhile. Once they are loaded, we can move over to working in Photoshop (this is where the fun begins)
In Photoshop:
Bridge will have made you a nice large file with many different layers containing all your photos.
- Make sure none of the layers are visible except for the bottom layer by clicking the small eye icon on each layer
- Starting from the bottom layer, click on “layer blending options” and select “lighten” This will blend the layers together keeping only the lightest areas of the photo
- Continue selecting each layer and change the blending mode to “Lighten”. As you continue changing each layer to “Lighten, you will see more and more lightning strikes start to appear.
Your photo is now done! You can flatten the image and save it in whatever format you like.
I hope you found this tutorial useful!
As always, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
The Mountains
I moved to Calgary recently, and have just fallen in love with the mountains here. I try to get out as often as I can to photograph them, as they will always look different depending on the light and the weather. These are some of my favorites so far, enjoy!!
Shooting Star Trails: Tutorial
Well, I thought it was about time I did a new tutorial. A few people have been asking for tips on how to do star trails, there seems to be a few misconceptions and a few different methods – so here is mine! (in excruciating detail)
What you need:
Camera (obviously)
Remote shutter release (or duct tape…. You’ll see)
Tripod
Clear skies
Adobe Bridge (optional but highly recommended), and Photoshop
Time (lots of it)
The Prep
Before we get into the method of actually shooting, there are a few things you need to take care of first, namely, finding stars, and finding a clear sky. Firstly, you want to get as far away from light pollution as you can; luckily, some kind soul has taken the time to put together a REALLY great website just for this purpose and it can be found here: http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/ . The map is pretty self explanatory; bright colors = bad, dark colors = good. Once you find yourself a nice dark corner of the world, the next thing you need to be aware of are how clear the skies will be, this includes the current moon phase which you can find here: http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases_calendar.phtml . You want to chose a night with the least amount of moonlight, as this will make the stars appear much brighter. Finally, once you know your location, you want to make sure you have a cloud free night otherwise you will be photographing cloud trails instead of star trails, once again, there is a tool for that! http://cleardarksky.com/csk/ provides clear sky charts for many locations across North America that let you know where and when to find a cloud free sky. The chart may be a it daunting, but it is actually very simple, here is a quick example:
This shows the clear sky chart for the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper, Alberta and you can see by the legend there is essentially 90-100% cloud cover for the entire forecast period with the exception of a few hours on Friday morning moving towards lighter cloud cover Friday night. Seeing as how this is where I am planning to go on Friday – it is a bit of a gamble!!
The Shooting
Now that all the planning has been taking care of, we can talk about shooting (don’t worry this is the easy part!)
First, you will want to firmly set up your tripod so that it wont move or get blown over by the wind. For star trails you want to shoot on manual mode so there is no change in exposure between photos with a 30 second exposure. The ISO speed and aperture will change depending on which lens you are shooting with, here is a list of settings you would need to use at several common apertures to get a 30s exposure:
F/1.4 ISO400 = 30s
F/2.8 ISO1600 = 30s
F/4 ISO3200 = 30s
F/5.6 ISO6400 = 30s
It goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyways) you really want to try to get your hands on the fastest lens you can (largest aperture, smallest “F” number – I know.. it makes no sense) These are just a good base to start with, once you frame your shot and take a few test shots, you will probably need to play around with the ISO to get the proper exposure.
For example, this was taken at f/1.4 ISO400 30s and was the starting point for one of my star trails.
Once you have your shot framed and settings dialed in, it is time to break out the remote shutter control (or duct tape). First make sure that your camera is set to drive mode so it will take consecutive shots instead of a single frame, plug in the remote and let the camera take pictures on its own for 3o min to a few hours depending on how long you want the star trails to be. If you are taking the ghetto route because you don’t have a remote (like I have many, many times) use the duct tape to tape down your shutter button, and let the camera take photos. You should end up with a minimum of 50 photos (25min) to several hundred (hours).
The Editing
Now that you already have several hours of your life invested in making a single picture, the fruits of your labor are finally about to pay off!! For this part of the tutorial, I’m going to be assuming a basic understanding of Adobe Bridge, and Photoshop – if you need clarification on anything leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you.
In Bridge:
Import all your photos into Adobe Bridge
Open one photo into adobe RAW through Bridge and edit it to your liking
Select all your photos, right click and select “Develop Settings > Previous Conversion” this will synchronize the editing across all your photos
With all your photos selected, click: “Tools > Photoshop > Load files into photoshop layers”. Depending on how many photos you have, this step can take quite awhile. Once they are loaded, we can move over to working in Photoshop (this is where the fun begins)
In Photoshop:
Bridge will have made you a nice massive file with many different layers containing all your photos.
Make sure none of the layers are visible except for the bottom layer by clicking the small eye icon on each layer
Starting from the bottom layer, click on “layer blending options” and select “lighten” This will blend the layers together keeping only the lightest areas of the photo
Continue selecting each layer and change the blending mode to “Lighten”. If you have trails from airplanes that you want to get rid of, you can use the brush tool, paint over them in black, and they will disappear! As you continue changing each layer to “Lighten, you will see trails start to appear.
You can select all layers and change the blending mode for all of them at the same time, but if you do have any airplane trails you want to get rid of, it will be very hard to go back and find them. Once you have all the layers set to “Lighten”, you will almost be done, and have something like this:
This last step is completely optional, but I feel it adds a lot to the photo. As you went about setting each layer to lighten, you may have noticed some dark areas in your photo get lighter that you may not want, such as the mountains in the above photo, this step will mask out those areas to tone down the lighting where you don’t want it
Select one of your layers and make a copy by pressing CTRL+J (or CMD+J if you are cool and use a mac)
Select all the layers except the one you just created, right click on them and select “merge layers” you will now have two layers, one with star trails, and one “Normal Photo”
Make sure the normal photo is the top layer, set blending mode back to “Normal” and create a layer mask ( Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All)
Using the Brush tool, paint over the sky area using black (Make sure you have the mask layer selected, not the photo) This will block out the areas you paint over, leaving only the original exposure of the mountains
You will be able to see the difference in the brightness of the mountains ni the photo below:
Your photo is now done! You can flatten the image and save it in whatever format you like.
I know there are several ways you can do this, and a program that automates the process, but I really prefer the hands on method working layer by layer so you can make any adjustments as necessary along the way.
Good luck!!
November Lightning
A line of storms swept across Southern Ontario tonight giving Toronto one more quick light show for the season!
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 13 sec Aperture f/5.6 ISO/Film 200
Hurricane Sandy in Toronto
Spent the night getting some pictures of the effects of Hurricane Sandy in Toronto. Winds started picking up at around 6pm reaching maximum strength at about midnight with peak gusts at over 80km/h resulting in branches littering roads, blown transformers, power outages, and fires.
Cranes swaying in the wind as gusts start to increase in strength
A view of Etobicoke, Bright light between buildings on the left is the flash of a blown transformer
Several images of fire crews responding to a Three Alarm fire in a Roots store at Queen and Soho
A view of Toronto from humber Bay Park
Long exposure of Toronto from Humber Bay Park
A View of Toronto from Royal York and Lakeshore
Waves from Lake Ontario crashing into shore
DIY Rain Guard
I’ve always been asked how I keep my equipment dry while shooting storms, and I figure with Hurricane Sandy on the way now would be a good time to share! This is a very simple, inexpensive, easy to use and very effective solution to shooting in the rain! It costs less than 5 dollars but I have never felt the need to purchase anything to replace it.
I find this cover works so well, because not only do you have access to all your camera controls, it also provides an extension to your existing lens hood to give it further protection from the rain. So here goes:
Materials
- Lens with Lens Hood
- Duct Tape
- Circular Take out Container
- Heavyweight Clear Plastic Bag
- Marker
- Knife
- Scissors
Step 1: Trace outline of lens hood on the back of the container
Step 2: Using exacto knife cut out the circle for the lens hood *leave 1 or 2mm gap for the lens hood to sit on*
Step 3: Tack the lens hood in place with a few small strips of duct tape
Step 4: Tape lens hood securely in place
Step 5: Replace lid and with exacto knife cut out a circle large enough not to obscure the field of view of the lens
Step 6: Cut out a corner of the plastic bag using scissors, place the hood inside the bag and re-attach the lid
Step 7: Using the exacto knife, carefully cut away excess plastic
Step 8: Tape up the edge with some duct tape to hold the lid securely in place
Step 9: Attach lens hood to camera and get some awesome shots from inside the storm!
Morning, Night, and Sandy
The clouds over Toronto were looking pretty good tonight, had to take a shot. Also, as a bonus – a sunrise too!
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 5 sec Aperture f/10 ISO/Film 160
Toronto Autumn Sunrise by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/8 ISO/Film 100
Clouds at Night by Richard Gottardo
Also of note, Hurricane Sandy:
Next week should be pretty intense for all of Southern Ontario if these models validate - extremely high winds, heavy rain, and lots of flooding. I’ll be getting as many pictures as I can around the GTA – for live tweets from the eye of the storm you should give Mark Robinson and George Kourounis a follow on twitter as they are headed down to NY/NJ to intercept Sandy as it makes landfall. 
Fall Skies
Couldn’t resist getting a shot of the beautiful fall sky. Also, no cranes in the way – bonus!
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 1/4 sec Aperture f/16 ISO/Film 50
Northern Lights Oct 9, 2012
I wasn’t even going to go out tonight. I saw that there was some activity going on that could see some northern lights forming, but I had too much work to do from weddings… plus I was feeling very lazy. I was watching the activity steadily increase and photos coming in from other chasers Spencer Sills and Dave Patrick. At 5 to 11 the Kp forcast was set to go up to 7.6! So, I decided it was time to get out there and take some photos. My cousin had mentioned a wind farm in Shelburne, ON that I wanted to check out – so I got out there as fast as I could (within the speed limit obviously ;)
Panoramic shot of the Milky Way and Northern Lights
Northern Lights behind Windmills at Melancthon II Wind Plant
Northern Lights and Melancthon II Wind Plant
Northern Lights and Meteor from Draconid Meteor Shower
Windmills and northern lights at Melancthon II Wind Plant
Northern Lights erupting into streaks as I was on my way home
My faithful companion who sat out freezing in a field with me for over an hour!
I call this one, “The Porschern Lights” lol
Toronto Fog
It’s that time of year again where the temperature starts dropping to meet the dew point – and the result is blankets of fog over Toronto. Many more nights like this should be coming up very soon!
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 10 sec Aperture f/10 ISO/Film 250
Fog Over Gardiner Expressway by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 8 sec Aperture f/8 ISO/Film 250
Skydome and CN Tower by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 8 sec Aperture f/8 ISO/Film 250
Condos in Fog by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/7.1 ISO/Film 100
Last Sunrise of the Summer
The very last sunrise of the summer sure was a beautiful one! The city was covered in some high clouds, and the sun would just keep peeking through creating some brilliant colours.
5D Mark III, Aperture: f/10, ISO: 250, Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
Last Sunrise of the Summer by Richard Gottardo
Lightning and Barn
I thought that this would be the very last storm we would see for the 2012 storm season in Ontario – and it was just borderline. I had been watching for days and it looked like there would be a front sweeping across Souther Ontario and it seems like the conditions could be favourable for something severe – although there was a very good chance we could see nothing but a night of rain. Not willing to miss a chance at getting some lightning shots, I packed up my gear and headed north while watching the radar to see where my best chance of lightning would be. I ended up at Shelbourne Ontario, found a nice open field right in the path of a storm that was producing some lightning, set up my tripod and started shooting! This was the result, glad I decided to go out that night.
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length: 45mm Shutter Speed: 30 sec Aperture: f/5.6 ISO/Film: 160
Storm Clouds over Toronto
This storm was a little unexpected, while the cloud structure looks really cool – it did not produce anything severe, only rain!
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 1 sec Aperture f/3.5 ISO/Film 320
Multiple CN Tower Strikes
Taken on August 24, 2012 – exactly 1 year ago during one of the biggest electrical storms I’ve ever seen in Toronto. The first Picture is a composite image of about 45min worth of lightning strikes on the CN Tower composed of 8 30sec exposures and the second is a single exposure of a MASSIVE strike. Typically I shoot lightning at around f/7 – f/8 but the lighting this night was so intense that I had to shoot it at f/14!
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II, Focal Length: 24mm, Shutter Speed: 20 sec, Aperture: f/14, ISO: 100
Multiple CN Tower LIghtning strikes by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 20 sec Aperture f/14 ISO/Film 100
Freak Storm – Aug 10
So this started out as a small cell in the Fergus area that just wouldn’t die – hung around for a couple hours then moved a bit west to Orangeville, hung around there for a couple hours and then all of a sudden zoomed all the way across to Richmond hill putting out a TON of lighting
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 5 sec Aperture f/7.1 ISO/Film 800
In-Cloud Lightning by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 8 sec Aperture f/4.5 ISO/Film 100
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 4 sec Aperture f/5 ISO/Film 800
Lighting & Gravity Waves by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark III Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 2 sec Aperture f/5 ISO/Film 800
Lightning Chase Night!
July 25, 2012 saw just about every storm chaser in southern ontario pulling an all nighter. A front moving across from Michigan was set to produce some severe weather over night, this was also the night I got to really test out my new lightning trigger. The storms were set to hit almost all of Southern Ontario with some severe weather – not wanting to miss any of the action – I had set up one camera pointed at the Toronto skyline attached to a lightning trigger, and brought the other out with me into the field. The storms this night did NOT disappoint, they came about 2 hours later than expected – but when they did they came with a vengeance! I parked myself right in the path of where the strongest cell looked like it would go and it roared in with continuous lightning, pea sized hail and HEAVY rains.
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 3 sec Aperture f/1.4 ISO/Film 2500
Shelf Cloud by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/2.2 ISO/Film 320
Shelf Cloud Rolling In by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/8 ISO/Film 200
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 24mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/8 ISO/Film 200
Lightning Strikes a Tree by Richard Gottardo
(8 shot composite)
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/7.1 ISO/Film 100
Multiple CN Tower Strikes by Richard Gottardo
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Focal Length 45mm Shutter Speed 30 sec Aperture f/7.1 ISO/Film 100
Lightning Strike Toronto by Richard Gottardo
Northern Lights
Felt the need to make a blog post about this. I have been wanting to hunt down the northern lights for several years now, and I finally had the opportunity tonight – although there was only a very slim chance, I still took it! First I headed to the northern most tip of Meaford, ON. only to find out it is an active weapons range for the armed forces (3.5 hr drive mind you), so had to settle with second most northern point of Meaford. Although the stars there were nice, there was no sign of lights at all and checking data online showed very weak activity. I took a few shots by the shore and then decided to head home. After about an hour of driving I decided I may as well check the activity again seeing as how I would be passing close to the shore, and it showed that activity had increased quite dramatically!! I pulled over, set up the camera on “trilobite” beach in Craigleith Provincial park, and finally got the show I was looking for! :D here are the pics:
