{"id":3351,"date":"2019-09-03T12:15:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T00:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.belindalansleyphotography.co.nz\/?p=3351"},"modified":"2019-09-03T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T00:15:57","slug":"aurora-chasing-in-christchurch-take-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/belindalansleyphotography.co.nz\/2019\/09\/03\/aurora-chasing-in-christchurch-take-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Chasing in Christchurch – Take One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christchurch Photographer \/ Aurora Chaser<\/h4>\n

What you don’t know about my photography<\/h5>\n

When I first started photography I mainly shot landscapes on holidays. \u00a0That was my thing. \u00a0When I first got my Fujifilm X-T1, I bought a Samyang lens to go with it so I could capture auroras. \u00a0I’ve only had one time when I had a tiny bit of aurora in my photo and that was down in Te Anau – but I wasn’t happy at all with the photo.<\/p>\n

A night of aurora chasing – late to the party<\/h5>\n

Last night I went out chasing auroras with three other crazy photographers. I was sitting at my kid’s swimming lesson when I saw that there was aurora activity photo starting to appear online on the aurora Facebook pages at about 7:00 pm. \u00a0We just got home from swimming at about 7.20pm and the children were about to go to bed. I needed to eat some food. \u00a0It was Father\u2019s Day yesterday and I had a massive lunch and didn\u2019t feel like eating earlier on. I had some scrambled eggs on <\/span>toast while texting my friend Craig and then decided to invite Martin as well and also my sister Melissa.<\/span><\/p>\n

A cat attack<\/h5>\n

We all met at Craig’s place on Main North Road. Martin picked up Melissa, as they were both in Kaiapoi. \u00a0I sat at Craig’s waiting for them feeling a bit stressed because I had been rushing. Mr Tinkles the rag doll cat, jumped on my lap straightaway and started smooching me as he was trying to sooth my stress. Then Millefeuille got on my lap to0 and tried to get up my jumper. He is a hairless cat and likes to get warm, but he could also feel my stress. \u00a0Then there was a tussle between Mr Tinkles and Millefeuille, trying to be kingpin on my lap. Craig took this photo of the two of them. <\/span>When Melissa and Martin arrived Millefeuille had prime position down my top.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Missing tripod piece<\/h5>\n

The other problem I had was I couldn\u2019t find the top to my tripod and I had to Sellotape my Fujifilm X-T2 to the top of my tripod. This was not ideal. <\/span><\/p>\n

The beach first then the port hills<\/h5>\n

We threw our gear in the back of my car and decided to go to North Brighton beach to see if we could get anything at all of the aurora. It was meant to finish at about 9 pm. After finding there was far too much light pollution from the surf club plus the pier (we happened to be north of the pier) we decided to head for the hills. All the action online had finished. \u00a0Was there no more aurora? \u00a0 We thought we would go and find out and risk it. I headed down Brougham Street as fast as I could legally go and then up Columbo Street to Dyers Pass Road. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Some music and windy roads<\/h5>\n

When we hit the bottom of Dyers Pass Road I put Little Mix on and Craig and I were singing it flat out. \u00a0The other two didn\u2019t know it so well. Around the top of the hills it was very windy and Martin was feeling a little bit uncomfortable in the back of the car. It was very dark and there were lots and lots of aurora hunters up on the port hills. We decided to go to Gibraltar Rock which is at the far southern end of the Port Hills just above Tai Tapu.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Clear skies<\/h5>\n

It was looking very clear and there was just a slight piece of cloud on the lower horizon. There was an enormous group of people shooting south with Gibraltar rock in the shot. We couldn\u2019t park anywhere near that area which was more towards Christchurch and had no dedicated car park. \u00a0I decided to go into the Gibraltar Rock car park, unfortunately disturbing someone\u2019s long exposure with our car headlights. Luckily they were calm people and didn\u2019t get upset with us. We set up four tripods in a row and started taking photos.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pink and green aurora<\/h5>\n

Straight away I could see I had pink and green in my camera. Martin told me there was no aurora that it was all in my imagination. \u00a0It was my white balance gone wrong. My white balance got changed to 3600 Calvin and I could still\u00a0<\/span>see the pink and green. \u00a0No one else seem to be getting anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Being a dog<\/h5>\n

At one point Craig wished he had a dog to shoot so I became a dog with my hands. \u00a0I didn\u2019t make a very good dog. Craig has a pet photography business called Furtography<\/a>. \u00a0Plain auroras are not really his thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

A thick impenetrable mist<\/h5>\n

Then as fast as possible a mist came in and we were shooting a dark grey black fog. \u00a0Gibraltar Rock was now almost completely invisible, as were the lights of Christchurch. \u00a0As we were leaving Gibraltar Rock we saw the large group that we had seen earlier all huddled in a bunch, like penguins in the Antarctic, all trying to keep warm. \u00a0We all burst out laughing as it looked so hilarious. We got home at about 10:45pm at night and I instantly processed my photos in the quickest way I could. There I finally saw the aurora. It wasn\u2019t huge but it was there. Yes! \u00a0I had finally captured an aurora. \u00a0It was so exciting and a really great adventure for a Sunday night. \u00a0Below are the failed photos of the thick mist.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christchurch Photographer \/ Aurora Chaser What you don’t know about my photography When I first started photography I mainly shot landscapes on holidays. \u00a0That was my thing. \u00a0When I first got my Fujifilm X-T1, I bought a Samyang lens to go with it so I could capture auroras. \u00a0I’ve only had one time when I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,25,26,27,29,42,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aurora-chasing","category-christchurch","category-fujifilm","category-fujifilm-x-t2","category-fujifilm-xt-1","category-landscapes","category-samyang-12mm","category-travel"],"yoast_head":"\nAurora Chasing in Christchurch - 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