Shooting in the Arctic night

I find myself running, breathing hard, down an icy hill in the pitch dark, the darkest dark I have ever been enveloped in. I am trying to find my tripod without knocking into it and ruining my hour-long timelapse. I move hands around delicately, in the red light from my headlamp that barely reaches a meter, when suddenly the world is illuminated an otherworldly, almost radioactive green. I look up instantly. There, above my head, the aurora borealis, the northern lights, expand and glide and pulse with tremendous energy, and I am mesmerized.

Making photos in difficult conditions challenges a photographer on so many levels, but artistic rewards are for the bold. Photographing in the Arctic involves excellent cold weather gear and an adventurous spirit. Photographing at night in the Arctic requires a commitment.

Much of the famous magical light of the North happens to also be what cameras think of as low-light conditions. We humans with our incredibly sensitive eyes can see things in light that cameras struggle with, yet cameras have long had an advantage-long exposures. By letting a camera sit on a tripod for thirty seconds, the majesty of the northern lights can actually be captured by a camera sensor. It’s a job that until very recently, was impossible for a smartphone camera. With the introduction of the OPPO Find X5 Pro, long exposures are now possible on a phone, in Pro mode. That’s quite a feat by itself, but there’s more. That’s just night-time.

The time-of-day landscape photographers cherish is usually twilight and sunrise/sunset. That’s the time when the shadows become long, the blacks lighten, and the colors of the land reveal themselves in glorious swaths of gold. You’ve seen it before—the mountains bathed in ethereal red with wildflowers in the foreground.

It’s this time-of-day when landscape photographers first pull out the tripod. But now, with the advent of image stabilization and HDR modes, smartphones can actually be used to handhold HDR photos with excellent dynamic range. What was once a mad dash at sunset to setup a tripod, find an angle and go from one long exposure to the next can be simplified—to shooting just like in the daytime (with steadier hands).

On the OPPO Find X5 Pro, you also get HDR and lowlight abilities, in 4K Ultra Night Video mode powered by its imaging Neural Processing Unit. You line up a shot like usual, hit the trigger, and then hold steady for several seconds while the phone does its computational magic. It’s a simple way of working and intuitive, for the twilight periods when light is at its best.

Once the last light vanishes, Pro mode lets you use the phone just like any other big camera with a manual mode- and set the shutter speed to many seconds, which allows you to capture the Milky Way or <gasp> the northern lights. The aurora is for many, the holy grail of Arctic photography. The best part is that while that long exposure is going, you can look away from the screen and soak in the dancing, swirling aurora spirits above you.

Another amazing way to compose images out here on the vast open Arctic horizon is to use a panoramic mode. The Find X5 Pro’s Hasselblad XPAN mode has an almost nostalgic interface, and the view of the composition on the phone inspires. The long, wide format allows me to look at the landscape differently, to look at the stretched horizon line, and to shoot and compose in black in white. The resulting images look stunning but the process of taking the picture is surprisingly fun.

None of this is possible without being ready for Arctic conditions. From your head to your toes, you need to have excellent clothing systems to endure the harsh weather of the North. Even in the summer the Arctic demands preparation. Iceland is a particularly good place to learn how to manage in the Arctic environment, because it is milder than most other Northern regions and the infrastructure there allows for mistakes to be made and gear to be purchased if you are missing something critical.

Photographers need to pay attention to a few special items. I recommend waterproof ice-climbing gloves, which are dexterous for most Arctic weather until the temperature gets below -10C (15F). I also recommend keeping anything that has a battery inside your coat in the inner warm layers until it’s needed. Otherwise, battery life is depleted incredibly quickly.

These details are the things that free an Arctic adventurer from having to battle the conditions and allow us to focus on making good work. The ultimate goal of a north-facing photographer is to achieve a level of freedom akin to working in the south of France.

Once we understand the rhythms and demands of the northern landscape, we get closer to becoming a local. It no longer holds us hostage. We are freed to revel in the spell of the Arctic-and share it through our photographs.