"Ah, yeah, that one was from the 10th of May. So, it was a really, really strong storm, solar storm, really, really strong colors, big shapes. One of the newspapers asked me for one of the images that I'd taken, that I posted on social and I sent it to them and it basically looked like they'd been at it with magic markers. Whatever they did, they just turned the saturation right up. Lucky they didn't put my name in the paper because that's not how I edited the shot. But that was, that sells papers I guess, that's what they do."
Tom: Good evening, Jim. Welcome on the podcast tonight.
Jim: Hi, Tom. How are you?
Tom: I'm fine. I'm good. All day waiting for this fun interview with you about the Aurora special.
Jim: Same here. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.
Tom: Jim, I saw today your post on Instagram with the lobster pots in the foreground. I hope there was a nice pub with some good food.
Jim: There is a little hut that serves tapas and seafood, which is really, really good. It wasn't open at that time. It wasn't open the morning that I took that photograph, but it is a very good seafood place.
Tom: Steak and ale pie?
Jim: I haven't seen steak and ale pie on the menu, but I'm a big fan of steak and ale pie. So I'll definitely take that anytime it's on the menu.
Tom: You see? Me too.
Jim, we have you on our list for 2025 for a more in depth interview with you about your landscape photography. But tonight we invited you here to talk about the Aurora and to get better shots of Aurora next time they happen. But just as an intro about yourself, Jim you started, I think, to take up photography seriously after you got a knee injury. And then it became almost like an obsession for you. Share me a bit how that journey unfolded.
Jim: So previously I did train quite intensively and I tore a cartilage in my knee. That stopped me from training the way that I always trained. I was looking for something else to, as an interest, as a hobby. And it was around about the time that we were sort of coming out of the lockdowns. And I stumbled across photography.
I actually was looking for photography for my office, photographs to hang on the wall. And I kind of lost myself in some of the Ansel Adams photography, some of the really old imagery. And it kind of went from there. So I fell in love with the types of images he was taking, the landscape, high contrast dramatic sort of landscape images. And I thought, I'm gonna give that a go, bought a camera and the rest. It's kind of history. I sort of dived in from that point and I spent far too much time thinking about photography, taking photographs, learning more about photography that sort of thing. So, yeah, it has become a bit of an obsession, Tom, if I'm honest.
Tom: To be clear, you didn't study it as to say in school, you all learn this from YouTube.
Jim: Yeah, yeah, pretty much all of it from YouTube University. So I did do graphic design at school at college. That was a very long time ago, but it was probably before the time that graphic design was mainly done on computers. So it was very much kind of magic markers, you know, big, big sort of A3 sheets of paper and sort of designing from scratch. I think maybe some of the composition ideas that I have and maybe some of the color theory that I have comes from that background, but I didn't study photography at all.
Tom: And so your first camera you picked up, what was that?
Jim: Well, the first camera I picked up with the intention of taking photographs was the Sony A 7 III, and it was a cost based decision. So I didn't know at that point, how seriously I was going to take it. I did a bit of research and I do like to research things beforehand before I make a purchase and I concluded that that was for the price. And from a review point of view, that was probably the best option for me. And I think once you're into an ecosystem, you're in it. And then I started to buy a third party. So I bought a couple of Tamron lenses, and then by the time you're buying the filters for those lenses. And before you know where you are, you're invested in the ecosystem. And so I'm still shooting Sony today, but it started with the A 7.
Tom: Jim, your images, I think I can say they all have like a deliberately moody, consistent look to them. You do this, let's say to stay true to what nature gives you in that part of the world so people recognize the place.
Jim: I do it a lot of cases. Yeah. So we're very lucky. So the place I live is called Northumberland, which is the very northeast corner of England. So it borders Scotland. And so we're on the East coast, we get the sunrises. So we get a lot of spectacular light, actually.
So where we are this far north the morning light can be pretty amazing. For the 4 mornings a year that we get that light, the rest of the time it can be quite moody and dark and cloudy and raining and that sort of thing. So I think what I've tried to do is to try emphasize some of the the mood, whether it be through the spectacular light or through maybe some of the darker moodier skies, but I try and bring some of that out in the photography as well.
Tom: Now you touched on Northumberland, I think. We can talk a little bit about your project, , what you're doing, Jim. I think you're nearing almost completion on this project now. Tell our listeners a bit quick what inspired you to start documenting those 70 castles in Northumberland.
Jim: The first place I went to with the Sony a 73 III was Bambourgh Beach. So Bambourgh is in the pretty far north on the coast. Very spectacular castle, lots and lots of history dating back thousands of years. And I've photographed that castle from every conceivable angle under all kinds of different conditions. There's a few other famous castles, maybe half a dozen that are really famous in Northumberland, and I've photographed all of those a whole bunch of times. And I said to my wife, I wonder how many castles there are in Northumberland. Did a bit of research and I found out that there were 70 castles, which is more than any other county in England. So I started researching that and trying to find a list of the 70 castles. The list was relatively easy to find. So there was two sources of lists. But in both of those lists, there was maybe half a dozen images of the famous castles, the big more famous castles. But nowhere was there record of all of the castles in Northumberland.
So I decided to try and be the first person to record all of these castles and 70 castles kind of sounds manageable, but Northumberland is a big old place. It's 2, 000 square miles and it's all back roads, so getting around is difficult. It's time consuming and so I think I've 52, 53 castles in Northumberland at the moment. So I'm towards the back end of the project. Some of the photographs I'm not entirely happy with and I will revisit and retake those shots, but I just want to get through all of them first. I'm getting towards the back end of the project.
Tom: Will talk about all this in detail in 2025 next year, Jim, because it's a very fun project to see. You can check it out anyway on your website. You have all the details there.
Now, let's start with our Aurora Special Edition, Jim. Let's start first, preparing and planning. Jim, what important factors do you consider before you go out? Or what sources you interpret.
Jim: You get in the car and drive to wherever to think about exactly where you want to be when the Aurora is making an appearance. So what you don't want is to get an alert on your phone. And then try and decide where you want to be at that point. There are a lot of different factors that you need to consider. One of the main ones being things like cloud cover. So Northumberland is a great example. So we've got the big sweeping coastline which often is free of cloud. But sometimes it's cloudy and you can move inland and have the exact opposite.
So you need to kind of think about two or three locations reasonably far apart, but accessible to you. You can get to within a reasonable amount of time that will have dark skies to the north. So that's kind of the first thing that I think you need to think about.
And tools for that would be the usual, you know, local knowledge or Google Maps and things like that to try and select locations. My personal view, and it's all Google. A lot of this is down to personal preference, Tom. But my personal preference is to have something of interest in the frame. So whether it be a castle or a lone tree, for example, or something of interest that you can think about placing in the frame. The Aurora is the subject matter, but it helps to have a supporting character in a castle or in a a tree or whatever it might be.
And then in terms of how I plan for the Aurora , there are a few apps which I think are particularly helpful for people to keep an eye on. One is Space Alive that is it requires a little bit of knowledge, but it's pretty self-explanatory. So when we get the CMEs or the mass ejections from the sun, it can be anywhere between sort of 24 and 72 hours where they're going to arrive into Earth's atmosphere. And a lot of the statistics that sit in those apps , will indicate whether or not it's going to create an Aurora for you.
There are some more prescriptive apps , which would be things like Aurora Watch or there's one called Aurora Tracker, I think it's called. But one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give people is there are guys and women out there who are studying this and posting it within Facebook groups. So if you have a Facebook group, which is local to you, join that group. And they will be able to help you to make a decision as whether or not it's worth kind of going out and standing in the cold and the dark for a while, for a couple of hours to try and see the Aurora . So those sorts of things for if you don't want to learn the science behind all of the statistics, they're probably the best option for people, I think.
Tom: I think we discussed this already one time before. It's not like you're having your dinner and you suddenly have to rush out the door because your alarm goes off. No, it's not like this. You know it before.
Jim: Yeah, well, I think , there's a kind of cause and effect. So the cause is the ejections from the sun, which will happen well in advance. So if you're kind of keeping an eye on this on an ongoing basis, you'll become aware that there's been a CME, for example. And then you can track that for a day or two until it arrives, the kind of closer satellites, which track it and we'll predict the speed the solar winds and so on and the Earth's magnetic field. So they're the sort of things that over time you get to learn that.
I think to dive in there straight away is quite intimidating, which is why I think the Facebook groups are really helpful. Because there's some really helpful people out there that are studying this and they're interpreting all that data. And they're saying to a group of people, Look, the chances are really good tonight, in the north of England. Providing you've got clear skies, there's a good chance that you're going to be able to get it on camera or it's going to be visible to the eye. So, I would advise, for beginners to join those Facebook groups and take guidance from people. And the more you're involved in, the more you see it, the more you interact with it, you'll pick things up. And over time, you'll learn maybe to interpret some of the statistics as well.
Tom: Okay, then now your alarm goes off. There is a Aurora warning, so to speak. What you put in your backpack, Jim?
Jim: So for me the first thing is you're going to need a tripod. So the exposure times on the camera obviously can't be handheld. So you're going to need the tripod. You're going to need your camera body. You're going to need a lens as wide as possible with as low an aperture as possible.The lower the better, really. I've got a couple of lenses, which I use. One is a 17 to 28 Tamron, which is F 2. 8 at the wide end. And I've got a Sony F 2. 8, which is 12 to 24, which gives me the kind of broader aperture. But because the subject is the Aurora , you want as much of the sky available to you as possible. So the wider the better and the lower the aperture the better. So really that's all you need. So you don't need to be carrying around a big backpack full of filters and different pieces of gear. It is literally camera, lens, tripod, and I think you're pretty much good to go.
Tom: Any useful settings maybe, Jim, you can give?
Jim: Yeah. So aperture as low as possible. So 2. 8 on the example lenses that I gave you if you can get down to 1. 8 brilliant. But as open as you can be. Depending on how active the Aurora is, that kind of dictates how long you want to expose for. So when I first started, the first ever shot, the first ever time I had a chance of taking the Aurora , I exposed it for 30 seconds. It was just like green, it was like just a green sort of pea soup in the sky. So it was way too long. And I've shot it now down to like 1. 6 seconds, 1. 8 seconds. Depending on how active it is. But I think your sweet spot is going to be somewhere between 6 and 8 seconds.
And your ISO, your balancing number really. So I think, you're probably going to be somewhere between, depending on again, how active it is, how bright the sky is, whether there's a moon involved, but normally somewhere between 16 and 32 hundred on the ISO as well. So they would be the starting settings.
And then I think from there, it's a case of just playing around, trying to take as many shots as you can, and just checking them on the back of the screen. And then deciding whether or not you need to speed the shutter up or slow it down, on the movement, and so on and so forth. I think, settings wise, it’s probably where I'd be, with regards to focus, pick a star, the brightest star, focus on the brightest star, make it as small and as sharp as possible, and focus wise, you should be good to go.
Tom: And composition wise, I think we touched it a bit before, Jim. Because I see, when Aurora happens, you suddenly get inundated on social media with Aurora shots. And most of them, they are just pointing up into the sky because they are fascinated with all the colors. And this is okay for just a few shots, but personally me, I prefer to have something more in the shot to tell more story.
So what's your take on this? What's to put in the foreground or in the background?
Jim: I completely agree with you Tom. It’s kind of think of the rule of thirds. What I generally would do is kind of keep the horizon line below the bottom third, so it's not as important as the sky. Because that's what you're there to shoot. But having something there to give it scale, to give it impact, I think it's really important. So we're very lucky in Northumberland because you've got all of the castles. And a lot of them are on the coast. So they're facing out to the North Sea where there are no lights behind them. So it's relatively easy for us to be able to providing you've got clear skies to get to the coast, point it at a castle, focus on a star, get your settings right, and you get a pretty good shot.
But I do think because there are so many Aurora shots now, it makes a huge difference to have something in the frame as opposed to just the Aurora .
Tom: To be clear, Jim, your shots are all single exposures? You're exposed for the castle, let's say in the background, because the Aurora will anyway take so long as you were exposed for the castle.
Jim: Yeah, all single shots. I haven’t composed any Aurora shot. I tend to underexpose the kind of the land side of it. And when I'm processing the image, I treat it as two separate things. So you've got the sky and then you've got the land. And I tend to underexpose the land because you can pull so much back, certainly from the Sony files, I can't talk for, for other brands. But from the Sony files, if you're underexposing the land, you can pull so much back from the shadows. And actually there's a decision to be made, artistically, I guess, do you want to silhouette the land, or do you want some of the shadows to be lifted because some of these shots look great in silhouette. So if it's a lone tree, for example, you might want to come, you may want to completely black land and black tree with the Aurora in the background. And that looks great. Or you might want to bring some of the shadows up and be able to see a little bit more. So that that I guess is down to the photographer.
Tom: Any particular challenges or common mistakes that you can talk about, Jim?
Jim: I think there's a few myths around the Aurora . So what one of the things that people you'll see on a lot of the Facebook groups and other sources, you'll see people talking about the K P index. And if it's a KP5 or KP6, people get really excited about the strength of the Aurora . And while that is somewhat true, the KP index actually refers to the magnetic field as opposed to the Aurora itself. So the higher the KP number, so it's a scale which is 1 is kind of weak to 9 which is extreme and the higher the number it means. So if you can imagine the pole if you can imagine a globe and a pole sticking through the, the globe, there's a kind of donut, which sits around the top of the globe. And the higher the KP number, the further down the globe. So it doesn't necessarily relate to the strength of the activity of the Aurora . It more indicates how far south, you'll be able to see it. So you need to look at other things as well as that. So there's a bit of a myth that if it's high KP, there's going to be a really strong Aurora . That's not necessarily the case. So that's kind of one thing.
The other thing that I think in terms of taking the shot and processing it is people tend to get very excited about the color and they will over saturated which again, it's personal preference. I'm not here to tell anybody how to process their images. And if you want it to have really strong color that's entirely up to you. But I tend to like it a little bit more muted.
Said that, eople get excited about the Aurora because there's colour in the sky, right? There's shape and there's colour in the sky. So you want to be able to show that colour. But in my opinion, you've got to find the right balance between showing the colour and not going crazy with it the point where it looks completely ridiculous or fake.
Tom: What you're using for post-processing, Jim?
Jim: I only use Lightroom. So my sort of post processing is I'll bring the file in, first thing I'll do I'll normally lift the exposure because I've underexposed the shot as a whole. Then I'll select the sky and invert it for the ground, and I'll select the sky again as a second mask, and then I'll treat those two things
And you know that one of the things that people expect to go out and see the Aurora and see really strong color in the sky. And sometimes you can't see. Even as far south. So I was out on Sunday night, Monday night in Northumberland, we had an Aurora display, and you could clearly see the pillars, you could see the movement in the sky, and the faintest amount of color. But if I go back to October the 10th, there was like a really vivid magenta color in the sky, it was so strong, I would even see it reflected in pools of water. It was that strong. So it just depends on what you're looking at. And actually, the shots I took on the 10th of October, I had to dial back the saturation by 20 odd, nearly 30 percent because it was so bright, it just looked ridiculous on on the image. And to the point where it had even cast the shadows as green and red, as I was lifting the shadows up, there was a green and red cast in the shadows, it was so strong. So it just depends on what you're looking at and how you want the finished image.
Tom: But Jim, you muted the colors and then I think your image got picked up by the newspaper and what they did.
Jim: Ah, yeah, that one was from the 10th of May. So, it was a really, really strong storm, solar storm, really, really strong colors, big shapes. One of the newspapers asked me for one of the images that I'd taken, that I posted on social and I sent it to them and it basically looked like they'd been at it with magic markers. Whatever they did, they just turned the saturation right up. They didn't put my name in the paper because that's not how I edited the shot. But that was, that sells favours I guess, that's what they do.
Tom: I think it's what people imagine when they think of Aurora, Jim.
Jim: I think so too, yeah.
Tom: What's your most memorable moment, what you think is your best picture you made with an Aurora inside?
Jim: Well, I think the evening 10th of May. I don't know how many shots I took Tom, I probably took five, six hundred shots and I haven't even looked at them all, there's so many of them, but there are a couple of shots there because that was so strong. We were in a place called Holy Island, which it's just off the Northumberland coast. And there's a castle there, a lot of history. And the Aurora was so strong, we were right underneath the hole. And there was like a cartwheel of light right around us. So it was in the southern sky, it was in the western sky. So I got an image of Lindisfarne Castle. I took the picture facing south, so from the north of the castle facing south, and there's a big, almost like a cartwheel of colour above the castle which is great. So to that point, I'd only ever seen images of the lights to the north of the castle. This was facing south. So that would be definitely my favourite shot. And I've got that pinned on my Instagram. That would definitely be the one that I remember the most.
Tom: We can round it up, Jim. I think we have all the necessary information here for the next time the Aurora happen. And by the look of it, I don't know why there are many more than ever before. Not here in Spain I cannot see them. But you guys up there in the UK, I think you had a very very good year for Aurora.
Jim: We definitely have. So, this year is the solar maximum. So every year the sun goes through an 11 year cycle and we're at the peak of that cycle this year, which is why there's been so much activity. And then that sort of tails off towards solar minimum and then picks up again, but this year has been fantastic. And I think, for the next few months, there's a good chance that they'll be pretty regular. So I'm hoping for clear skies.
Tom: And if not, you can buy the plane ticket to Iceland and go shoot them there
Jim: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom: Jim to round this off, to talk a little bit about your future projects. You had success with the calendar sale and a lot of interest in your work. I think we discussed this already some time. But in the project you're doing now, Northumberland, you're planning on bringing out a book or it will just end there on your website.
Jim: At the moment, it's just on the website. I've had quite a lot of people ask about a book or something similar to that. So once I've completed the project, that might be something I'm going to do in the future. But for now, and so I guess I didn't start the project with the intention of having a book or any kind of financial gain, it was more of just a sort of a personal project. But I think people are enjoying the images and so on and so forth. So maybe one day, Tom. But I'm not going to commit to that because the themselves were challenging enough to manage. So we'll wait and see.
Tom: We'll wait and see. Today in six months we talk again all about you Jim, who knows you have a nice coffee table book in the making.
Jim: Maybe.
Tom: Jim, last question. I really cannot convince you to pick up that guitar in the background and play a little song?
Jim: Definitely not. Well, if you want to lose some listeners, then yes, maybe, but no.
Tom: Jim, thanks a lot for this short interview and the information about Aurora . And I'm looking very much forward to seeing you again in some months and have a longer discussion about your life.
Jim: Look forward to it. Cheers, Tom.
Tom: Okay. Have a good evening still. And we see each other. Bye Jim.
Jim: Thank you. Bye bye.
