My Best Night of Photographing the Northern Lights

Aurora over Seward, Alaska

I’m alone on a forgotten beach. A bitter North wind gropes with frozen filaments. The ocean nearby, invisible, is a pool of ink like a portal to nowhere. Sea swells plunge into the sand with a gush and growl. A gibbous moon paints the mountain skirts in icy blue light.

But my gaze is fixed skyward. The night air is crystal clear, alive with electricity. Dancing auroras erupt across the tapestry of stars and galaxies. The most spectacular display I’ve ever seen.

All the elements collide—violent coronal storm, cloudless black skies, fierce magnetic forces—to bring this moment. This is a night when myth is born, a perfect confluence that may have no sequel. Manic with my camera, I rush from composition to composition. Each image on my screen makes me want to cry. The best photos of my life.

Yet, suddenly, I stop. This moment deserves something better. I topple to my back in the sand, unfeeling of the cold and the wind, and stare up as the sky delivers its most unearthly show. 

I am humbled. I am nothing. Spears of green and red build and wobble. Plasma vortices writhe and dance. A corona circle, like the eye of a fierce cosmic god, forms above me, gazing down from the heavens. On this deserted beach, this show is only for me. Never before, I realize, have I truly experienced the northern lights. I may never again.

Tonight is legend.

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
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Four Photographers Who Inspire Me (Trent Parke, Fan Ho, Todd Hido & Alexey Titarenko)

Multi-exposure street photography

Four photographers that inspire me to branch out from landscape photography are Trent Parke, Fan Ho, Alexey Titarenko and Todd Hido. Trent Parke's work, The Black Rose, gave me the idea to undertake my own street photography and art photography project that tells the human story of Alaska, not just about the natural beauty but the people who live in and visit it.

Fan Ho's incredible black and white photography helped me to start looking for contrasts, shapes and shadows.

Alexey Titarenko's work, City of Shadows, inspired me to take long exposures of groups of people or things that people were driving.

Todd Hido's moody work using liminal spaces and atmosphere and mood were crucial in helping me envision a new type of possibility in urban and landscape photography.

Join me as I examine the work of these four incredible photographers and try to imitate and apply their styles, twisting their ideas into my own and using them as a jump off point to create something new.

Watch the video here:

Subscribing to my YouTube channel costs you nothing and helps me out a lot. No need to even leave this page to do it, just click here:

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Visit THE ARCHIVE: A list of most of my articles and posts sorted by category

Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
For information about how to contact us, visit this link

A Year of YouTube: Did I Get Rich? Did I Learn Anything?

Callisto Peak, Resurrection Bay, Alaska

What can Youtube offer creators? What has a year of Youtube taught me? Is it still worth it to have a Youtube channel even if you have less than 1K subs? 

Are you thinking about starting a YouTube photography channel? It can be a fun and worthwhile experience despite the amount of work and lack of financial reward that most channels experience in their first year. I learned a great deal about videography, how to set up great shots, capture crisp sound and tell a compelling story. I still have a long way to go and haven't gained as much traction as I hoped, but the process has been a lot of fun. Ultimately, if you are having fun, then creating a new YouTube channel is worth it.

In this episode of Alaska Brian I look back at a year of posting videos almost weekly on Youtube and think about what I learned from using the platform and what I plan to do going forward.

Here is the short film I made to celebrate a year of YouTube and ponder a bit of what I've learned and whether or not it was worth all the work.

Subscribing to my YouTube channel costs you nothing and helps me out a lot. No need to even leave this page to do it, just click here:

---------------------------------------------------------------

Visit THE ARCHIVE: A list of most of my articles and posts sorted by category

Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
For information about how to contact us, visit this link