"Jim Scott: Aurora Photography Made Easy"

[00:00:00] Ah yeah, that one was from the 10th of May. So that was a really, really strong solar storm, really, really strong colours, big shapes.

[00:00:11] And one of the newspapers asked me for one of the images that I'd taken and posted on social media and I sent it to them and it basically looked like they'd been at it with magic markers.

[00:00:20] Whatever they did, they just turned the saturation right off. Luckily they didn't put my name in the paper because that's not how I edited the shot. But that sells papers, I guess.

[00:00:34] Greetings and welcome to a very special Christmas and New Year edition of The Camera Cafe Show, the podcast where we prove inspiration for your photography journey.

[00:00:43] As usual, I'm Tom Jacob with Tatiana Malavana and Richard Clarke working in the background to make this another wonderful episode.

[00:00:50] Tonight we're joined by the incredible, talented UK-based landscape photographer Jim Scott.

[00:00:55] Jim's journey into photography began as a personal hobby after recovering from a knee injury and it quickly transformed into a passionate pursuit.

[00:01:02] From his home in Northumberland, Jim captures the moody, dramatic beauty of the British countryside often featuring castles, coastlines and those breathtaking auroras, of course.

[00:01:12] His work is celebrated for his deliberate and authentic storytelling, drawing inspiration from his surroundings and a deep love for nature.

[00:01:19] In this episode, Jim shares his expert tips for photographing the aurora boralis.

[00:01:24] This conversation is packed with inspiration including how to plan and prepare for the perfect aurora shot, from choosing locations to understanding weather conditions,

[00:01:33] essential gear and settings to bring out the best in your night sky photography,

[00:01:36] composition tips that help you make your aurora shot stand out with forward elements that tell a story,

[00:01:42] and even the common mistakes to avoid.

[00:01:45] As we wrap up this year folks, let's embrace the spirit of learning, creativity and new beginnings.

[00:01:50] From all of us at The Camera Cafe Show, we wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a fantastic start to the new year.

[00:01:56] Now, let's dive in and discover how to turn those dazzling auroras into breathtaking photos.

[00:02:01] Let's get rolling.

[00:02:04] Good evening, Jim. Welcome on the podcast tonight.

[00:02:08] Hi, Tom. How are you?

[00:02:09] I'm fine. I'm all day waiting for this fun interview with you about the aurora special.

[00:02:16] Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

[00:02:19] Jim, I saw today your post on Instagram with the lobster pots in the foreground.

[00:02:24] I hope there was a nice pup with some good food near.

[00:02:27] There is a little hut that serves tapas and seafood, which is really, really good.

[00:02:34] It wasn't open at that time. It wasn't open the morning that I took that photograph, but it is a very, very good seafood place.

[00:02:42] Steak and ale pie?

[00:02:44] I haven't seen steak and ale pie on the menu, but I'm a big fan of steak and ale pie.

[00:02:48] So I'll definitely take that anytime it's on the menu.

[00:02:52] Me too. Jim, we have you on our list for 2025 for a more in-depth interview with you about your landscape photography.

[00:03:01] But tonight we invited you here to talk about the aurora and to get better shots of aurora next time they happen.

[00:03:10] But just as an intro about yourself, Jim, you started, I think, to take a photography seriously after you got a knee injury.

[00:03:18] And then it became almost like an obsession for you.

[00:03:22] Share me a bit how that journey unfolded.

[00:03:24] Yeah, so it was three years ago this month.

[00:03:27] So previously I did train quite a bit, quite intensively, and I tore a cartilage in my knee.

[00:03:34] And that stopped me from training the way that I always trained.

[00:03:37] I was looking for something else as an interest, as a hobby.

[00:03:41] And it was around about the time that we were sort of coming out of the lockdowns.

[00:03:45] And I stumbled across photography.

[00:03:47] I actually, I was looking for photography from my office, photographs to hang on the wall.

[00:03:53] And I kind of lost myself in some of the Ansel Adams photography, some of the really old imagery.

[00:03:58] And it kind of went from there.

[00:04:00] So I fell in love with the types of images he was taking, the landscape, high contrast, dramatic sort of landscape images.

[00:04:07] And I thought, I'm going to give that a go.

[00:04:09] Bought a camera and the rest is kind of history.

[00:04:12] 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.

[00:04:21] So yeah, it has become a bit of an obsession, to come up and to be clear.

[00:04:26] You didn't study it as to say in school.

[00:04:29] You all learned this from YouTube.

[00:04:31] Yeah, yeah.

[00:04:32] Pretty much all of it from YouTube University.

[00:04:35] So I did do graphic design at school, college.

[00:04:38] That was a very, very long time ago, but it was before, probably before the time that graphic design was mainly done on computers.

[00:04:46] So it was very, very much kind of magic markers, you know, big, big sort of A3 sheets of paper and sort of designing from scratch.

[00:04:55] I think maybe some of the composition ideas that I have, and maybe some of the color theory that I have comes from, from that background.

[00:05:04] But I didn't, I didn't study photography at all.

[00:05:07] And so your first camera you picked up?

[00:05:09] It was a, well, the first, the first camera I picked up with the intention of taking photographs was the Sony A7 III.

[00:05:18] And that was purely from, it was a cost-based decision.

[00:05:21] So I didn't know how seriously at that point, how seriously I was going to take it.

[00:05:25] I did a, I did a bit of research and I do to research things beforehand, before I make a purchase.

[00:05:30] And I concluded that that was for the price and from a review point of view, that was probably the best option for me.

[00:05:37] And, and I think once you're into an ecosystem, you're in it.

[00:05:40] And then I started to buy third party.

[00:05:43] That's all about Tamron lenses, maybe.

[00:05:45] And I bought a couple of Tamron lenses.

[00:05:46] And then by the time you do that, then you're buying the filters for those lenses.

[00:05:50] And before you know where you are, you're invested in the ecosystem.

[00:05:53] And so I'm still shooting, shooting Sony today, but it started with the A7 III.

[00:05:58] Jim, your images, I think I can say they all have like a deliberately moody, consistent look to them.

[00:06:07] You do this to stay true to what nature gives you in that part of the world.

[00:06:12] So people recognize the place.

[00:06:15] I do in a lot of cases.

[00:06:16] Yeah.

[00:06:16] So we're very lucky.

[00:06:18] So we're on the, the place I live is called Northumberland, which is the very northeast corner of England.

[00:06:23] So it borders Scotland.

[00:06:25] And we get obviously, so we're on the east coast, we get the sun rises.

[00:06:28] So we get a lot of quite spectacular light actually.

[00:06:31] So, so where we are this far north, the morning light can be, can be pretty amazing for the four, four mornings a year that we get that light.

[00:06:39] The rest of the time, it can be quite moody and dark and cloudy and raining and that sort of thing.

[00:06:44] So I think what, what I've tried to do of late is to try and emphasize some of the, the mood, whether it be through the spectacular light or through maybe some of the dark moodiest skies.

[00:06:55] But I try and bring, bring some of that out in the photography as well.

[00:07:00] Now you touched on Northumberland.

[00:07:02] I think we can talk a little bit about your project, what you're doing, Jim.

[00:07:07] I think you're nearing almost completion on this project now.

[00:07:11] Tell our listeners a bit quick what inspired you to start documenting those 70 castles in Northumberland.

[00:07:17] Okay.

[00:07:19] I kind of, the first place I went to with the Sony a7 III was, was Bamboura beach.

[00:07:25] So Bamboura is in the pretty far north on the coast, very spectacular castle, lots and lots of history dating back thousands of years.

[00:07:35] And I've photographed that castle from every conceivable angle under all kinds of different conditions.

[00:07:41] And there's a few other famous castles, maybe half a dozen that are really famous in Northumberland.

[00:07:47] And I've photographed all of those a whole bunch of times.

[00:07:50] And I said to my wife at the time, I wonder how many castles there are in Northumberland.

[00:07:56] Did a bit of research and I found out that there were 70 castles, which is more than any other county in England.

[00:08:02] So I started researching that and trying to find a list of the 70 castles.

[00:08:07] The list was relatively easy to find.

[00:08:10] 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.

[00:08:18] But nowhere was there a photographic record of all of the castles in Northumberland.

[00:08:24] So I decided to try and be the first person to record all of these castles and 70 castles kind of sounds manageable.

[00:08:31] But Northumberland is a big old place.

[00:08:33] It's 2000 square miles and it's all back roads.

[00:08:36] So getting around is difficult.

[00:08:38] It's time consuming and so on.

[00:08:41] So I'm about, I think I have 52, 53 castles in at the moment.

[00:08:45] So I'm towards the back end of the project.

[00:08:48] Some of the photographs I'm not entirely happy with, and I will revisit and retake those shots.

[00:08:53] But I just want to get through all of them first.

[00:08:55] So I'm getting towards the back end of the project.

[00:08:59] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:00] We will talk about all this in detail in 2025 next year, Jim.

[00:09:05] Yeah, sure.

[00:09:05] Of course.

[00:09:06] It's a very, very, very fun project to see.

[00:09:10] You can check it out anyway on your website.

[00:09:12] You have all the details there.

[00:09:14] Now, let's start with our Aurora special edition.

[00:09:18] Yeah.

[00:09:18] Jim.

[00:09:20] Let's start first preparing and planning.

[00:09:23] Jim, what important factors do you consider before you go out?

[00:09:28] Okay.

[00:09:28] So I think one of the big things to think about long before you get in the car and drive to wherever is to think about exactly where you want to be when the Aurora is making an appearance.

[00:09:42] 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.

[00:09:47] There are a lot of different factors that you need to consider.

[00:09:50] One of the main ones being things like cloud cover.

[00:09:52] So Northumberland is a great example.

[00:09:54] 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.

[00:10:02] So you need to kind of think about two or three locations reasonably, you know, far apart, but accessible to you that you can get to within a reasonable amount of time that will have dark skies to the north.

[00:10:14] So that's kind of the first thing that I think you need to think about.

[00:10:18] And tools for that would be the usual, you know, local knowledge or Google maps and things like that to try and select those locations.

[00:10:26] In the locations, my personal view and it's all a lot of this is down to personal preference, Tom, but my personal preference is to have something of interest in the frame.

[00:10:37] 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.

[00:10:45] The Aurora is the subject matter, but it helps to have a supporting character in a castle or in a tree or whatever it might be.

[00:10:53] And then in terms of, you know, how I plan for the Aurora, there are a few apps which I think are particularly helpful for people to keep an eye on.

[00:11:02] One is Space Weather Live. That is, it requires a little bit of knowledge, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

[00:11:07] 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 in this atmosphere.

[00:11:18] And a lot of the statistics that sit in those, those, those apps will indicate whether or not it's going to create an Aurora for you.

[00:11:24] There are some more prescriptive apps or one of the things that would, which, which would be things like Aurora, what, or there's one called Aurora tracker.

[00:11:35] I think it's called, but one of the, one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give people is there are, there are, there are guys and women out there who are studying this and posting it within Facebook groups.

[00:11:46] 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 to whether or not it's worth kind of going out and standing in, in the cold for, and the dark for, for a couple of hours to try and see the Aurora.

[00:12:01] So those sorts of things for, if you don't want to learn the signs behind all of the statistics, they're probably the best option for people, I think.

[00:12:09] I think we discussed this already one time before.

[00:12:11] It's not like you're having your dinner and you suddenly have to rush out the door because your alarm goes off.

[00:12:17] No, it's not like this.

[00:12:18] You know it before.

[00:12:20] Yeah.

[00:12:21] Well, I think there's a kind of a cause and effect.

[00:12:24] So the cause is the ejections from the sun, which will happen well in advance.

[00:12:27] 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, you know, to the kind of closer satellites, which track it and will predict the speed of the solar winds and so on and so forth and the Earth's magnetic field.

[00:12:46] So they're the sort of things that, you know, over time you get to learn that.

[00:12:50] 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.

[00:13:02] And they're saying to a group of people, look, the chances are really good tonight, you know, 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.

[00:13:13] So I would advise, you know, for beginners to join those Facebook groups and take guidance from people.

[00:13:19] And the more you're involved in it, 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.

[00:13:28] Okay, then now your alarm goes off.

[00:13:31] There is an aurora warning, so to speak.

[00:13:35] Yeah.

[00:13:35] What do you put in your backpack, Tim?

[00:13:38] So for me, the first thing is you're going to need a tripod.

[00:13:41] So the exposure times on the camera obviously can't be handheld.

[00:13:46] So you're going to need a tripod.

[00:13:47] You're going to need your camera body.

[00:13:49] You're going to need a lens as wide as possible with as low an aperture as possible.

[00:13:53] So 2.8 or the lower the better, really.

[00:13:56] I've got a couple of lenses which I use.

[00:13:58] One is a 17-28 Tamron, which is f2.8 at the wide end.

[00:14:03] And I've got a Sony f2.8, which is 12-24.

[00:14:07] Because the subject is the aurora, you want as much of the sky available to you as possible.

[00:14:13] So the wider, the better.

[00:14:14] And the lower the aperture, the better.

[00:14:15] So really that's all you need.

[00:14:17] So you don't need to be carrying around a big backpack full of filters and different pieces of gear.

[00:14:24] It is literally camera, lens, tripod.

[00:14:27] And I think you're pretty much good to go.

[00:14:29] Any useful settings maybe, Jim, you can give?

[00:14:32] Yeah.

[00:14:33] So aperture as low as possible.

[00:14:35] So 2.8 on the example lenses that I gave you.

[00:14:38] If you can get down to 1.8, brilliant.

[00:14:40] But as open as you can be.

[00:14:42] Depending on how active the aurora is, that kind of dictates how long you want to expose for.

[00:14:47] So when I first started, the first ever shot, the first ever time I had a chance of taking the aurora,

[00:14:52] I exposed it for 30 seconds.

[00:14:54] It was just like green.

[00:14:55] It was like just a green sort of pea soup in the sky.

[00:14:58] So it was way, way, way too long.

[00:15:01] And I've shot it now down like 1.6 seconds, 1.8 seconds, depending on how active it is.

[00:15:08] But I think your sweet spot is going to be somewhere between 6 and 8 seconds.

[00:15:12] And your ISO is your balancing number, really.

[00:15:16] So I think you're probably going to be somewhere between, depending on, again, how active it is,

[00:15:21] how bright the sky is, whether there's a moon involved.

[00:15:24] But normally somewhere between 16 and 3,200 on the ISO as well.

[00:15:30] So they would be the starting settings.

[00:15:33] And then I think from there, it's a case of just playing around, trying to take as many shots as you can,

[00:15:38] 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,

[00:15:46] depending on the movement and so on and so forth.

[00:15:48] I think that's probably, settings-wise, is probably where I'd be.

[00:15:52] And with regards to focus, pick a star, the brightest star, focus on the brightest star,

[00:15:58] make it as small and as sharp as possible.

[00:16:00] And you should be, you know, focus-wise, you should be good to go.

[00:16:03] And composition-wise, I think we touched it a bit before, Jim.

[00:16:07] Because I see when Aurora happens, you suddenly get inundated on social media with Aurora shots.

[00:16:14] And most of them, they are just pointing up into the sky because they are fascinating with all the colors.

[00:16:19] And this is okay for just a few shots.

[00:16:22] But personally, me, I prefer to have something more in the shot to tell more story.

[00:16:28] Yeah, I completely agree with you, Tom.

[00:16:32] My view is, you know, if you kind of think of the rule of thirds,

[00:16:35] what I generally would do is kind of keep the horizon line below the bottom third.

[00:16:41] So it's not as important as the sky because that's what you're there to shoot.

[00:16:46] But having something there to give it scale, to give it impact, I think is really important.

[00:16:51] So we're very lucky in Northumberland because we've got all of the castles.

[00:16:55] 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.

[00:17:00] So it's relatively easy for us to be able to, you know, provide you've got clear skies, to get to the coast.

[00:17:07] Point out of the castle, focus on a star, get your settings right, and you get a pretty good shot.

[00:17:13] But I do think because there are so many Aurora shots now,

[00:17:18] it makes a huge difference to have something in the frame as opposed to just the Aurora.

[00:17:23] And to be clear, Jim, your shots are all single exposures?

[00:17:28] You just expose for the castle, let's say, in the background?

[00:17:32] Because the Aurora will anyway take so long as you expose for the castle?

[00:17:38] Yeah, all single shots.

[00:17:40] I haven't composited any Aurora images at all.

[00:17:43] They're all one shot out of camera.

[00:17:45] I tend to underexpose the kind of the land side of it.

[00:17:51] And I treat when I'm processing the image, I treat it as two separate things.

[00:17:55] So you've got the sky and then you've got the land.

[00:17:57] And I tend to underexpose the land because you can pull so much back, certainly from the Sony files.

[00:18:04] I can't talk for other brands.

[00:18:06] But from the Sony files, if you're underexposing the land, you can pull so much back from the shadows.

[00:18:11] And actually, there's a decision to be made artistically, I guess, is do you want to silhouette the land

[00:18:18] or do you want some of the shadows to be lifted?

[00:18:21] Because some of these shots look great in silhouette.

[00:18:24] So if it's a lone tree, for example, you may want a completely black land and black tree with the Aurora in the background.

[00:18:34] And that looks great.

[00:18:35] Or you might want to bring some of the shadows up and be able to see a little bit more.

[00:18:39] So that, I guess, is down to the photographer.

[00:18:43] And any particular challenges or common mistakes that you can talk about, Jim?

[00:18:51] I think in terms of one of the – there's a few myths around the Aurora.

[00:18:56] So one of the things that people – you'll see on a lot of the Facebook groups and other sources,

[00:19:02] you'll see people talking about the KP index.

[00:19:04] And if it's a KP5 or KP6, people get really excited about the strength of the Aurora.

[00:19:10] And while that is somewhat true, the KP index actually refers to the magnetic field as opposed to the Aurora itself.

[00:19:18] So the higher the KP number – so it's a scale of one, which is kind of weak, to nine, which is extreme.

[00:19:26] 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 globe,

[00:19:34] there's a kind of donut which sits around the top of the globe.

[00:19:37] And the higher the KP number, the further down the globe, the KP, the donut will reach.

[00:19:43] So it doesn't necessarily relate to the strength of the activity of the Aurora.

[00:19:49] It more indicates how far south you'll be able to see it.

[00:19:55] So you need to look at other things as well as that.

[00:19:57] So there's a bit of a myth that if it's a high KP, there's going to be a really strong Aurora.

[00:20:01] That's not necessarily the case.

[00:20:03] So that's kind of one thing.

[00:20:05] 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.

[00:20:12] And they will oversaturate it, which, again, it's personal preference.

[00:20:17] I'm not here to tell anybody how to process their images.

[00:20:21] And if you want it to have really strong color, that's entirely up to you.

[00:20:25] But I tend to like it a little bit more muted.

[00:20:29] Having said that, people get excited about the Aurora because there's color in the sky, right?

[00:20:33] There's a shape and there's color in the sky.

[00:20:35] So you want to be able to show that color.

[00:20:37] But you've got to find, in my opinion, you've got to find the right balance between showing the color and not going crazy with it to the point where it looks completely ridiculous or silly.

[00:20:48] What you're using for post-processing, Jim?

[00:20:51] I only use Lightroom.

[00:20:52] Yeah, so my sort of post-processing is I'll bring the file in.

[00:20:58] First thing I'll do is I'll normally lift the exposure because I've underexposed the shot as a whole.

[00:21:03] Then I'll select the sky and invert it for the ground.

[00:21:07] And I'll select the sky again as a second mask.

[00:21:09] And then I'll treat those two things differently.

[00:21:11] So I'll generally lift the shadows to a point where I think that's pretty close to what I saw on the land.

[00:21:17] Then I'll treat the sky separately.

[00:21:20] And, you know, one of the things that people expect to go out and see the Aurora and see really strong color in the sky.

[00:21:26] And sometimes you can see even as far south.

[00:21:29] So I was out on Sunday night, Monday night in Northumberland.

[00:21:32] Then we had an Aurora display and you could clearly see the pillars.

[00:21:36] You could see the movement in the sky and the faintest amount of color.

[00:21:40] But if I go back to October the 10th, there was like a really vivid magenta color in the sky, which I could, it was so strong.

[00:21:50] I could even see it reflected in pools of water.

[00:21:53] It was that strong.

[00:21:54] So it just depends on what you're looking at.

[00:21:57] And actually, the shots I took on the 10th of October dialed back the saturation, like 20 odd, nearly 30 percent, because it was so bright.

[00:22:05] It just looked ridiculous on the image.

[00:22:08] And to the point where it had even cast the shadows as green and red.

[00:22:12] As I was lifting the shadows up, there was a green and red cast in the shadows.

[00:22:16] It was so strong.

[00:22:17] So it just depends on what you're looking at and how you want the finished image to look, I think.

[00:22:24] But Jim, you muted the colors.

[00:22:26] And then I think your image got picked up by the newspaper and what they did.

[00:22:30] Oh, yeah.

[00:22:32] That one was from the 10th of May.

[00:22:34] So that was a really, really strong solar storm.

[00:22:39] Really, really strong colors, big shapes.

[00:22:42] And one of the newspapers asked me for one of the images that I'd taken.

[00:22:45] I was posted on social.

[00:22:46] And I sent it to them.

[00:22:47] And it basically looked like they'd been at it with magic markers.

[00:22:50] Whatever they did, they just turned the saturation right up.

[00:22:53] Luckily, they didn't put my name in the paper because that's not how I edited the shot.

[00:22:58] But that sells papers, I guess.

[00:23:00] That's what they do.

[00:23:02] I think it's what people imagine when they think of auroras, Jim.

[00:23:06] Yeah, I think so too, yeah.

[00:23:08] What's your most memorable moment or what you think is your best picture you made with an aurora inside?

[00:23:15] I think that 10th of May, the evening of the 10th of May,

[00:23:18] was definitely, I got probably, I don't know how many shots I took, Tom.

[00:23:23] I probably took 500, 600 shots.

[00:23:26] And I haven't even looked at them or there's so many of them.

[00:23:28] But there are a couple of shots there because that was so strong.

[00:23:32] It was literally, we were on a place called Holy Island,

[00:23:36] which is just off the Northumberland coast.

[00:23:38] And there's a castle there, a lot of history.

[00:23:42] And the aurora was so strong.

[00:23:44] We were right underneath the hole.

[00:23:47] And there was a cartwheel of light right around us.

[00:23:50] So it was in the southern sky.

[00:23:51] It was in the western sky.

[00:23:52] So I got an image of Lindisfarne Castle.

[00:23:56] And I took the picture facing south.

[00:23:59] So from the north of the castle facing south.

[00:24:01] And there's a big, almost like cartwheel of color above the castle, which is crazy.

[00:24:07] So to that point, I'd only ever seen images of the lights to the north of the castle.

[00:24:13] This was facing south.

[00:24:15] So that would be definitely my favorite shot.

[00:24:18] And I've got that pinned on my Instagram.

[00:24:20] That would definitely be the one that I remember the most.

[00:24:24] Well, I think we can round it up, Jim.

[00:24:27] I think we have all the necessary information here for the next time the aurora happen.

[00:24:31] And by the look of it, I don't know why there are many more than ever before.

[00:24:37] Not here in Spain.

[00:24:38] I cannot see them.

[00:24:40] But you guys up there in the UK, I think you had a very, very good year for auroras.

[00:24:45] We definitely have.

[00:24:47] So this year is the solar maximum.

[00:24:49] So every, the sun goes through an 11-year cycle.

[00:24:53] And we're at the peak of that cycle this year, which is why there's been so much activity.

[00:24:56] And then that sort of tails off towards solar minimum and then picks up again.

[00:25:00] But this year has been fantastic.

[00:25:02] And I think, you know, for the next few months, there's a good chance that they'll be pretty regular.

[00:25:07] So I'm hoping for clear skies.

[00:25:11] And if not, you can buy the plane ticket to Iceland.

[00:25:14] Exactly.

[00:25:17] Jim, to round this off, to talk a bit, a little bit about your future projects.

[00:25:22] You had success with the calendar sale and a lot of interest in your work.

[00:25:28] In the project you're doing now on Northumberland, you're planning on bringing out a book or it will just end there on your website?

[00:25:35] At the moment, it's just on the website.

[00:25:39] I've had quite a lot of people ask about a book or something similar to that.

[00:25:43] So once I've completed the project, that might be something I'm going to do in the future.

[00:25:49] 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.

[00:25:57] It was more of just a sort of personal project.

[00:26:01] But I think people are enjoying the images and so on and so forth.

[00:26:05] So maybe one day, Tom.

[00:26:06] But I'm not going to commit to that because the calendars themselves were challenging enough to manage.

[00:26:13] So we'll wait and see.

[00:26:15] Today in six months, we talk again all about you, Jim.

[00:26:18] Who knows?

[00:26:19] You have a nice coffee table book in the making.

[00:26:22] Maybe.

[00:26:23] Jim, last question.

[00:26:25] I really cannot convince you to pick up that guitar in the background and play a little song.

[00:26:30] Definitely not.

[00:26:31] Well, if you want to lose some listeners, then yes, maybe.

[00:26:35] I'll give that a pass.

[00:26:36] A hard pass.

[00:26:38] How we can get.

[00:26:40] Jim, thanks a lot for this short interview and the information about Aurora.

[00:26:45] And I'm looking very much forward to seeing you again in some months and have a longer discussion about your life.

[00:26:52] Look forward to it.

[00:26:53] Okay.

[00:26:54] Have a good evening still and we see each other.

[00:26:56] Bye, Jim.

[00:26:57] Cheers, Tom.

[00:26:57] Thank you.

[00:26:58] Bye-bye.

[00:26:59] And that wraps up this special holiday shortcast on the Camera Coffee Show.

[00:27:03] A huge thank to Jim Scott for sharing his photography wisdom on Aurora Photography.

[00:27:08] From planning the perfect location to nailing those camera settings and crafting unforgettable compositions,

[00:27:13] you're all set now to apply them on your next adventure under the stars.

[00:27:17] We hope this episode has inspired you to grab your camera, brave the cold and create magic with the Northern Lights.

[00:27:23] As this year ends, we want to say thank you very much for being part of our journey.

[00:27:28] Here's to a bright, creative and fulfilling year ahead.

[00:27:32] Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays,

[00:27:33] and may your new year be filled with stunning shots and endless inspiration.

[00:27:38] Until next time, keep on picking up your camera and move your photography.

[00:27:42] Adios.