Even if the night was to be a total failure, at least I could have said my earlier timing prediction was close. The northern lights really started flying around 11:15pm, only 30 minutes off.

The best part is that I’m finally getting a handle on the massive variety of manual settings on the Nikon D70. I shot last night completely in manual mode. I used my new ML-L3 remote control and long exposures to get some pretty cool effects.

I also learned a valuable lesson about lens fog in cold weather — you can see some circle artifacts on several of the pictures because I didn’t think to check the lens before hitting the remote.

The star trails shot was one of the first I took, and it made me a little too happy for a guy standing around in a freezing field.