{"id":2966,"date":"2011-09-28T03:29:20","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T08:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/65.175.102.14\/?p=2966"},"modified":"2013-07-02T16:10:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T21:10:35","slug":"theyre-back-the-northern-lights-that-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=2966","title":{"rendered":"They’re back! The Northern Lights, that is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/center>Thanks to my network of spies, my cell phone vibrated my pillow tonight and set a great sequence of events in motion. My wife heard the phone, answered the text, woke me up, and I was on my way to catch the auroras before they faded! Naturally I headed out of town as quickly as I could after picking up my best friend.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Taking great photos of the sky ironically requires a good foreground object to put things into the proper perspective. In this case I found one of my favorite old windmills. I love these trademark North Dakota artifacts, but they do come with one caveat:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>They don’t always point in the direction you’d prefer. This shot had some great aurora activity in the background, but the head of the windmill isn’t really facing in a photogenic direction. Sure, I could Photoshop it, but that’s not how I roll.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>That’s more like it. I had to stumble around in the dark for a bit and try different angles around the area to see which one presented the best angle. Of course, once I moved in a certain direction, the auroras flared up in the other. I’m so accustomed to this taunting by the sky that I’ve actually developed a little bit of patience!<\/p>\n

As auroras go, tonight’s weren’t even that dramatic. I’m told there was a lot more “spike” activity before I dragged my tired butt out into position. I don’t care, though…it’s literally been YEARS since I’ve been able to take decent Northern Lights photos due to the solar minimum<\/a>. I’ve often joked that I single-handedly extinguished the auroras by buying digital cameras with the intent of photographing them! Now it seems that a frustratingly dormant period of solar inactivity is coming to a close, and I’ll be ready to capitalize on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to my network of spies, my cell phone vibrated my pillow tonight and set a great sequence of events in motion. My wife heard the phone, answered the text, woke me up, and I was on my way to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-northern-lights","category-skies-and-stars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2966"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3115,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions\/3115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}