I've lived on the Malvern Hills for several years now, and I'm quite lucky to have quite a dark sky above me. A couple of years ago, I signed up for the Aurora Borealis alerts and every single time the thing has gone off, I've looked out the window to see nothing but a thick blanket of cloud. It's the middle of October 2024 and the aurora alarm pings me. I'm so used to seeing nothing, I don't even get out of my chair. It wasn't until 2 hours later when my dad sent me a photo taken with his phone, which made it look like the sky was on fire. Sure it's 4 degrees outside and it's 10:30pm on a Friday night, but I decided now might be the time to finally try and photograph the Northern Lights, only a mile or so from my house.
My dad asked if he could join me, which was fab as it meant I could let him drive. On the walk up the hills, we were greeted by an endless stream of people saying 'wow that was amazing an hour ago, shame it's over now' (gits) and by the time we'd got to a position with a decent view, nothing much was happening.
After an hour however, things started to change. A faint green glow was becoming visible to the naked eye, the colours slowly developed until a pink glow was starting to blot out some of the blue/black of the usual night sky. I sent my dad up the next hill (the Beacon) in order to get a photo of him at the top, with his head torch pointing into the sky and casting a beam of light to be the focal point of my image. Of course when he got there, he couldn't get the head torch off the lowest power setting which scuppered things a bit. It's still an awesome photo as you can see below
It was just as my dad returned that a couple walked up to me, and asked to take a look at the photos I'd taken and talk about what I had seen. The sky began to erupt. It was like nothing I have ever seen and something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. At the same time however, I went straight into work mode, asking the coupe if they'd like a photo of them against the Northern Lights. They jumped at the opportunity, and the resulting picture is the one you can see at the top of this page. Having enjoyed the bonding experience I'd been having with my dad, I took a photo of the two of us to round off the evening. And when I say evening, it was now rapidly approaching 1am!
Location: Malvern Hills.
Keywords: Photographer-directed image (128).