My First Northern Lights, 2009 #tbt
Screen grab of my moblog post of the aurora borealis in Iceland, (c) Carole Edrich 2009
I first saw the Northern Lights on the IcelandAir press trip. They looked fine on my camera (a Nikon D700 which was a wonderful camera when new, but by this time needed replacing) but were rather less preposessing in real life. I’m not showing you the other images because they were rubbish.
We stopped by a church to take photos because every single gravestone had been decked with Christmas lights. I stayed behind. Everyone rushed to photograph the brightly lit church, the graveyard and the Aurora behind and above. I knew that to do the scene justice would take a really good camera and more time than we had. Besides which, it was cold and truth be told, I felt like shit.
For the most part, the Northern Lights didn’t look green at all. Instead, they looked as if a massive invisible trawler was towing white net curtain across the sky.
I remember feeling so tired and ill and so hot that I would lean my head against the window to feel the welcome cold of outside, but I never complained to anyone or mentioned how unwell I felt. In retrospect this seems stupid. It was clear from my lack of hair that I had only just finished chemo. I never socialised with the others in the evening because I desperately needed to rest. I guess they knew why, but I never mentioned it. What was the point? I was there, it wasn’t treatable and talking about my post-chemo symptoms weren’t going to make them go away. Now, 10 years later.. well… hindsight is a wonderful thing.
This post is lifted from my old moblog where it was published with other images on 2nd January, 2010. More than a photoblog, moblog is a wonderful community where I made lasting international friends, some of whom I’ve visited and many more of whom are as important in my life today as those I meet regularly in meatspace. More authentic, more ethical and sadly less well funded, I’ve been missing it increasingly as we discover the perfidy of Facebook and the brave new Social world. Contact me if you’d like to know more, because I’d really like to find a way to make moblog great again and extend it to anyone else who wants to share their images in a place of mutual support, community and data safety.