Texas drone photographer’s shots of northern lights go viral – CBS Texas
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
BYRON — Late Friday night the advance waves of a monster solar storm crashed into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The event was categorized by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as an “extreme” G5 geomagnetic storm that followed days of heightened amounts of solar activitiy that saw numerous magnetic eruptions on the sun’s surface.
Kathy Gannon shares an iconic photo by Anja Niedringhaus during a talk at Emerson College in Boston in 2022. (Photo: Beena Sarwar)
An exhibition of powerful images from Afghanistan and Pakistan by the late Pulitzer-winning photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus opened Thursday in Cambridge and is up through June 2.
I never met Niedringhaus, a German who worked in my country, Pakistan, but I have long known her close friend and colleague Kathy Gannon, a Canadian who has lived in Islamabad for decades. Gannon was severely injured in the attack that killed Niedringhaus.
An Afghan police commander had emptied the magazine of his AK-47 into the back seat of the Toyota Corolla where Gannon and Niedringhaus sat waiting outside a government compound in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost to cover the presidential election for The Associated Press.
Niedringhaus died instantly. She was 48. Seven bullets shattered Gannon’s arms and shoulders. One of her arms was shot practically off; a lung was punctured and collapsed.
Gannon is now the driving force behind the exhibition, which premiered at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York on April 4, marking 10 years to the day that Niedringhaus was shot and killed. There, I also met Niedringhaus’s older sister Elke Niedringhaus-Haasper, a journalist in Germany, who flew back for the reception at Harvard University, co-sponsored by the Nieman Foundation and the Shorenstein Center.
Courage
The opening reception at the Bronx was followed by the International Women’s Media Foundation Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award ceremony, now in its 10th year.
Gannon and Niedringhaus are International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism awardees – Niedringhaus in 2005 and Gannon in 2002. Gannon is also a Spring 2022 Shorenstein Center fellow.
The IWMF established the Courage in Photojournalism Award award after Niedringhaus’s death with a grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to celebrate “courageous women photojournalists” and recognize the “importance of visual journalism that helps us better understand our complicated world.”
This year’s awardees were Samar Abu Elouf from Palestine, Anastasia Taylor-Lind, a 2016 Nieman fellow from the U.K. and Sweden, and Nariman El Mofty from Egypt and Canada. Anastasia was the only one of the three able to attend the ceremony.
Gannon and Niedringhaus had planned to do a text and photo book on Afghanistan that they wanted to publish by the end of 2014, around the time the United States was to hand over security to the Afghans. Niedringhaus had already begun choosing images. “And it is that book that we changed to be just Niedringhaus and her images with remembrances, which is accompanying the exhibition,” said Gannon, 70, who retired from the AP in 2022 after 35 years covering Afghanistan and Pakistan and became the driving force behind the exhibition and book, which is supported by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the AP.
She has undergone 18 surgeries since the attack, with an annual procedure in New York. The last one was some days after the Bronx exhibition launch.
In all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never once heard Gannon complain or mention her injuries or trauma. Even now, when I reach out to ask her about the exhibit, she is characteristically matter-of-fact and focuses more on Niedringhaus and her spirit – which she herself exemplifies.
“Your life is as important to me as it is to you,” she remembers the Afghan surgeon saying at the government hospital in Khost.
He cauterized the bleeding, put a tube in her punctured lung so she could breathe and “literally used duct tape and wood to put my arm together,” says Gannon.
Doctors at the French military hospital in Kabul where she was later medically evacuated said that had she reached them first, they would have amputated the arm.
The pain is pretty steady, she admits when I ask, but “you manage it. When you think about what could have happened, it was so close to the spine … I’m so grateful every day.”
She continued reporting tenaciously, going back to Afghanistan like a rider thrown from a horse who gets back up.
Gannon has been in the region since 1986, when the mujahideen, so-called “holy warriors” trained and conditioned in Pakistan, financed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, were fighting the Soviet Union. They later morphed into the Taliban (literally, “students” – of the seminaries they had been trained at in Pakistan).
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Gannon was one of the few Western reporters they permitted to work there, a testament to the fairness of her reporting and the trust she inspires.
Humanity
The exhibition and the photographs themselves are a testament to the creed followed by both women, to humanize people and present them to the world in all their complexities, beyond the stereotypes.
Gannon’s co-authors and co-curators for the book and the exhibition are Ann Marie “Ami” Beckmann, director of the Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation, also a close friend of Niedringhaus who edited her “At War” book, and Muhammad Muheisen, two-time Pulitzer-winning photographer who runs the Every Day Refugees foundation and photographs for National Geographic.
Niedringhaus traveled for her work “through some of the most difficult years of the protracted Afghan war, reaching deep into the soul of Afghans, her pictures often serving to remind us of our own humanity,” says the Bronx Documentary Center, founded and run by the journalist Michael Kamber.
When Gannon began reaching out to possible partners for the exhibition, Michael was the first to say yes. She realized quickly that he is someone “Anja would be one with.” With his commitment to the community he serves – largely Haitian immigrants – he exemplifies “her spirit of giving, caring … she was a crazy person for helping others.”
She was with Niedringhaus on those trips “reaching deep into the soul of Afghans” – and Pakistanis – documenting in words what Niedringhaus did in pictures, offering glimpses into lives rarely witnessed by outsiders.
They are the only Western journalists to embed with Pakistan’s army, as well as the Afghan army, experiences they shared in a detailed interview with IWMF in 2012.
Another uniquely daring embed was with truckers from Landikotal in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa transporting fuel from Karachi to Kandahar.
“We did a lot of stories like that which no one had ever done before or since,” Gannon told me. “We were trying to make the invisible visible.”
She shared some of these stories and photos with my journalism students and at a larger discussion with two more classes at Emerson College in the fall of 2022. I had roped her in, as she was in the Boston area as a Shorenstein fellow.
“The exhibition serves to remind us of the extraordinary sacrifices journalists make to keep us all informed. This is a particularly powerful lesson at a time when journalists are dying, suffering life-changing injuries, being targeted, or being imprisoned at an alarming rate,” Kamber said.
Beena Sarwar is founder and chief editor of Sapan News, where Kathy Gannon serves on the informal advisory council. This article has not been sponsored or commissioned by anyone. An earlier version of this piece was published by Sapan News. This is a Sapan News syndicated feature available for use with due credit to sapannews.com.
May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. For our “Hidden Histories” series, we learn about Corky Lee, a photographer who chronicled the daily lives, struggles and contributions of Asian Americans, a community that is often marginalized, unsung and unseen.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS
Weather’s role in wildfires in Atlantic Canada | SaltWire #weather #climatechange #wildfireseason
George Wade was shaking at the wheel, his heart racing.
He was heading for Grand Pré about an hour before midnight, when he took a quick glance up through the sun roof of his car.
“The entire sky above me was just lit up with these green and purple shifting pillars of light,” said Wade. “I was just in complete awe.”
Wade was among some lucky Nova Scotians treated to dazzling northern lights displays in the province Friday night.
The spectacle was caused by a powerful solar storm that lit up the skies unusually far south in the Northern Hemisphere.
The celestial light displays are a result of energy particles from the sun colliding with the upper parts of the earth’s atmosphere. In this case, we’re seeing the most powerful solar storm in more than two decades, according to the The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was expected to continue through Saturday night with the possibility of more northern lights displays in Nova Scotia.
Wade is just glad for having been part of it, and finally seeing the spectacle for the first time in his life. A dream of his.
“It’s such an overwhelming natural event, something so rare and fleeting where we are,” said Wade. “To be a witness to nature’s incredible, baffling beauty it really makes you grateful.”
Wade would take hundreds of photos of the spectacle that night. He set off from his home in Kentville for Grand Pré at 11 p.m., and took his last photo at about 3 a.m.
An experienced astrophotographer, he’s well accustomed to shooting the night sky. He chose to set up at Grand Pré because of its natural beauty but also because it offered him the best vantage point: secluded and facing north.
It turned out to be a fine choice. One of his shots shows the deportation cross — a symbol commemorating the forced deportation of Acadians from Grand Pré in 1755 — against a neon green and purple backdrop. Another captures a softly lit Memorial Church against a warm glowing sky. Wade then made the 40-minute drive to Huntington Point where he shot the colourful, historic fairy cottages basking in a celestial glow.
It was challenge to capture the dancing, shifting light, he said.
“They looked like shifting pillars of light and they’re constantly moving so you have to be ready to move quickly,” he said.
He’s since had a chance to look at his photos and he says they rank at the top of his all-time collection.
“It was an other-worldly kind of feeling being out there,” he said. “I was desperate to photograph the northern lights for years. So it was just an incredible experience.”
He has one little regret about the experience.
“I probably didn’t sit back and appreciate it as much as I should have.”
This weekend, Northern California is experiencing a rare opportunity to witness the Northern Lights, and you don’t need professional camera equipment to capture this spectacular phenomenon.
Triggered by heightened solar activity, this extraordinary display became visible Friday night far south of its usual geographic range, with photographs surfacing as far as Yosemite National Park in California. Residents who missed the initial display might still have the chance to witness the phenomenon, as the NOAA predicts that storming of varying intensity will persist through at least Sunday.
While the best photographers came out with some of the best NorCal photography we’ve seen in years, you can still capture this incredible event without expensive equipment. In fact, with a few tweaks to your smartphone settings, you can photograph the aurora borealis right from your phone.
Modern smartphones, particularly newer iPhone models from the 11 series onwards, come equipped with a Night Mode feature. This mode is specifically designed to enhance your camera’s low-light capabilities, allowing it to capture more detail and color in dark environments than the naked eye can see. Make sure Night Mode is activated in your camera settings before you start shooting.
To capture the best possible images of the Northern Lights, you should adjust the exposure time on your smartphone. On an iPhone, you can do this by opening the camera app, tapping the arrow at the top of the screen to access hidden settings, and then selecting the Night Mode icon. Here, you’ll be able to increase the exposure time, ideally to the maximum setting. For the best results, an exposure time of about 30 seconds is recommended, but note that this usually requires the phone to be completely still, so a tripod might be necessary.
Since long exposure shots require your camera to be stable, using a tripod can greatly improve the quality of your photos. This is particularly important when trying to capture something as subtle and dynamic as the Northern Lights. Invest in a sturdy tripod that can handle your smartphone and withstand outdoor nighttime conditions.
Being further north improves your chances of seeing and capturing the aurora, but clear skies are crucial regardless of your location. Check the weather forecast and aim for a spot away from city lights with minimal cloud cover. The darker the environment, the better your chances of capturing the lights.
Even if you can’t see the aurora with the naked eye, your smartphone’s camera might still pick it up due to its sensitivity to different light spectrums. Take multiple shots to increase your chances of capturing a clear image of the Northern Lights. Remember, patience is key when photographing this elusive natural wonder!
The forecast early Saturday called for cloudy skies, but photographer John Entwistle looked on an app and saw an opening coming in the cloud cover.
So at 3 a.m. the Farmingdale resident got out of bed and set up for the light show of a lifetime.
“Insane,” Entwistle said. “I wanted to see them for years but you have to go up north. To have it in my own backyard is just incredible.”
The northern lights, or more emphatically aurora borealis, should also be seen early Sunday in New Jersey, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
Solar storms that shower the Earth with energy, light and high-speed particles — plasma or coronal mass ejections — haven’t been this strong in some 20 years. While that could mean disruptions of the power grid, the Global Positioning System and other communications equipment, they can also bring curtains, rays, spirals and showers of light. During this storm, the dazzling flickers were seen as far south as the Bahamas.
According to the space weather prediction center, this storm has reached G5 status, the most extreme storm from solar flares, an unusual event and the first time it has occurred since October 2003, according to the NOAA.
Entwistle had been waiting for this moment for years. For him, the historic space weather event was just something to marvel at.
More: The northern lights danced across the US last night. It could happen again Saturday.
“Every time there’s one of these coronal mass ejections, the media picks up on it … They’ve said it many times before, that you might be able to see them in New Jersey and I never have, so you take it with a grain of salt,” Entwistle said. “Now, it’s definitely one off my bucket list.”
Entwistle said the joy of photography comes from capturing something like this and then passing his pictures around.
He has gone viral before, amassing some 250,000 likes with a photograph of a supernumerary rainbow taken from his deck on Sept. 18, 2018.
“It looks fake, but it’s real and very rare,” he said.
On April 8, he made an 11-hour trip up to Maine to capture the total solar eclipse, the brilliance of which was related to the intense solar activity this season.
“So I thought I was having a good year getting that eclipse. And now I get this to add,” he said. “It’s been an extraordinary year.”
Ken Serrano covers breaking news, crime and investigations. Reach him at 732-643-4029 or at kserrano@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Northern lights beam in this shot taken by Farmingdale photographer
59th Annual Downtown Bethlehem Fine Art and Craft Show photos
59th Annual Downtown Bethlehem Fine Art and Craft Show
A sudden “solar superstorm” has seen vivid displays of aurora in both the northern and southern hemispheres this weekend—and many of the best images have been taken by nothing more than a smartphone.
Colorful displays of green, red and even blue patterns dancing overhead places including Florida, the Bahamas and Mexico, all far beyond the regular reach of the auroral oval, which typically hangs around the Arctic and Antarctic Circles.
With more displays likely incoming across the globe, it’s important to understand that using a camera is a great way of observing the phenomenon. That’s because aurora can be faint and/or affected by light pollution. Taking a long-exposure photo—even if only for a few seconds—is a great way of seeing reds and greens in the sky even when your eyes cannot.
Here’s how to photograph the northern lights with both a smartphone and a DSLR/mirrorless camera.
Not all smartphones are created equal. If your smartphone has a “Night Mode” feature, that should be good enough to get a more than impressive souvenir shot of the aurora. It likely means a long exposure of between five and 10 seconds, which will look much better if you do three things:
If you have a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can manipulate the ISO, aperture and shutter speed to capture the aurora with more control and quality.
Whatever device you use to capture the aurora, don’t be tempted to oversaturate color during editing. Sure, you’re proud of the reds and greens you captured, but oversaturating them can easily make them look fake and awkward.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Bird photography is arguably the most demanding genre. The equipment quality, the photographer’s camera skills, and their ability to create a narrative are pushed far beyond any other genre. Here’s what I discovered about cameras, lenses, and bird photography.
I’ve always wanted to delve into bird photography. Around six months ago, I spent a lot of money buying a top-quality long lens. I found that it helped me get photos that I previously thought impossible. Coupling it with the new camera that I had in advance of its later official release in April, my bird photography has been revolutionized.
With all other genres, the photographer has greater control over the photograph than when photographing birds. Studio photography is usually entirely staged. Sports photographers know where the start and finish line are or where the goal mouth is. Landscape photographers can plan where to stand at what times. Not so with birds.
Although some behavior can be anticipated, there’s no directing a wild bird. You can’t insist that it perches on a particular branch or dives for food right in front of you at a certain time. It’s not going to turn its head on demand, so the catchlight is in its eye. Furthermore, birds can move from being in deep shadows to flying against a bright backlight in a fraction of a second. Most birds are small, often moving quickly and randomly to evade predators.
I am not saying that shooting landscapes or studio portraits don’t require a high level of proficiency, and I am certainly not running down any other genre. However, a bird photographer must learn how to predict a bird’s behavior, have gear that will cope with their speed and size, shoot without disturbing the subject, and have enormous patience waiting for the action to happen. Furthermore, they still need the creative ability to take compelling images.
I wanted a decent wildlife lens for a long time, especially for photographing birds. But I was dithering over what I should get. I’ve always only bought things I can afford and, at the same time, the best my budget can manage. Some sad personal circumstances led me to receive a modest inheritance last year. That meant I could buy a lens I previously had not considered viable.
Most camera brands produce premium-quality telephoto zooms. I bought one that works with the system I use. I chose it for multiple reasons, but primarily for its outstanding performance. I realize it’s beyond the budget of many photographers. However, some features are worth looking for on lenses you buy to fit your camera.
Good-quality telephoto lenses are essential for good-quality wildlife shots. That’s not solely about reach, the lens’s ability to get the sensor filled with the bird. Most importantly, the lens also must gather sufficient light to achieve a fast shutter speed. Plus, it needs sharpness to show the fine detail.
Yes, the ubiquitous 75mm – 300mm f/4-f/5.6 lenses are far more affordable, but they are also slow to focus and suffer from poorer image quality that you will find in lenses costing a little more. Many years ago, when using a different system than the one I use now, I owned such a lens. It was unusable beyond 200mm because it was just too soft. I swapped it for a 50-200mm f/2.8 professional lens and although it was shorter, I had far greater success, and the images were crystal clear.
My new lens has a constant fast f/4.5 aperture throughout its 150-400mm focal length range. This is clever engineering because as a lens’ focal length increases, the size of the aperture should be proportionately smaller. Usually, the F-number increases because the focal length is divided by the aperture. As a result, one must usually compensate by either decreasing the shutter speed, thus potentially getting movement blur, or increasing the ISO, which will lead to more noise in most circumstances. With a constant aperture, this is unnecessary.
Although secondary to its light-gathering capacity, a lens’ reach is important. Although I got good results with that 50-200mm f/2.8 lens, it was too short. Being able to zoom to 400mm gives me much more scope, especially as my Micro Four Thirds cameras give me effectively more reach than I would fitting a similar unit to a 35mm-sensor camera. Importantly, having extra reach means that a photographer is less likely to disturb the subject, and the creature’s welfare is of paramount importance.
My lens also has a built-in teleconverter that multiplies the focal length by an extra 1.25, giving a maximum reach of 500mm. Though I am not a fan of such comparisons, on my camera, that is the equivalent focal length of a 1000mm lens on a full frame 35mm camera. It’s worth noting that teleconverters do reduce a lens’ f-number. By activating the switch adds an extra stop to the lens. Furthermore, fitting an additional 2x teleconverter, like the OM System MC-20, gives a huge 1000mm reach. That’s 2000mm, equivalent to a 35mm camera.
I find that having a lens with far more equivalent reach than most people have with 35mm full-frame cameras with the equivalent lens gives distinct advantages when it comes to photographing birds. With this lens, a subject that was a meter long would need to be 23 meters away to fill the frame horizontally, and the depth of field would be 0.44 meters. With a 35mm full-frame camera with a 400mm lens, the subject at the same distance would be approximately half the size in the frame, and the photo would have double the depth of field.
One useful feature to have is a focus limiter switch. That speeds up autofocusing by restricting the focusing range to fall within certain parameters. For example, I can make my lens focus only between 1.3 to 6 meters, or 6 meters to infinity. I can, of course, select the entire range too. Although available with this lens via a switch, my camera also has a focus limiter built within the menus. It’s worth checking your camera menus to see if it has a focus limiter.
A related feature is having buttons that will prefocus the lens on any distance you have set it to. Again, this speeds up acquiring the subject. Not every lens has it, but speed
You should also be able to switch quickly between manual focus and autofocus on the lens. Check the robustness of this switch as it may be something you use a lot. With many of the professional OM System lenses, this is not a switch but what they call a clutch. The entire focusing ring can be pulled back. That changes the lens to manual focus and, at the same time, reveals the focusing distance scale. Manual focus is something you may find evermore useful when you focus on the eye of a bird that’s otherwise hidden deep in the foliage.
Having the zoom and focus rings close enough together to be operated with the finger and thumb tips of one hand is essential. You also want those rings to have exactly the right amount of resistance. Furthermore, they should start turning smoothly and not suddenly jerk when you begin to rotate them.
My lens has a switch that turns off the beep, telling you the camera is in focus. That is so as not to disturb wildlife or other photographers. Again, this feature is usually also available in the camera menus.
Image stabilization is another essential feature of any wildlife system. My lens provides up to 4.5 steps of image stabilization (IS). Moreover, when partnered with the OM-1 Mark II’s In Body Image Stabilisation (IBIS), it increases up to 8.5 steps of IS, allowing you to hold the camera steady at very low shutter speeds. More useful still, I find, is its ability to counteract the movement of a boat or withstand me being buffeted by strong winds; I live in the windiest county in England.
Most wildlife photographers turn off IS when capturing birds in flight. In my camera, it is possible to engage image stabilization in just one direction. For example, when tracking birds in flight, I turn off the horizontal IS and keep the vertical turned on.
Other things to consider are a carbon-fiber lens hood that helps keep the weight down, strap mounting eyes on the lens, and an Arca-Swiss compatible tripod mounting foot.
Although lenses improve image quality far more than camera bodies, any system is only as good as the weakest link. There is little point in buying a superb camera if your lens is slow and soft. Similarly, a fast, ultra-sharp lens will be held back by a camera that has low performance. Also, the conditions you shoot in can affect your images too.
The weakest link could, of course, be the photographer. I know this is contentious, but I believe in giving novices tools that will not restrict them but enable them to take the best possible images right from the start. Cameras that are a delight to use are far more inspiring than cheap plastic lumps found on the shelves of supermarkets. Give a beginner a camera with AI bird tracking and a fast lens with quick, accurate focusing, and they will walk away with better photos than if they use cheap, so-called entry-level gear.
