Sean Norman Photography » Vancouver based & internationally travelling photographer | Sean Norman

friends, i have issues, and i may be insane. you’re welcome, clients who think you want to book with me!

i was on the bus home from work, heading to superstore for a grocery shop. i know, groceries on public transit – sucks right? but who cares, that’s not my issue. in fact, you should have seen my stack of groceries inside those black fabric bags. playing tetris with bags all day at the airport has it’s perks ;) anyway, groceries or not, i was still a few stops away from mine, i had a few minutes, twitter is usually a good time passer. “@auroramax: an aurora is now visible above yellowknife, northwest territories. check it out here…” my phone is in the red. i’m down in the single percentage. i need two things to grocery shop. music. and my ‘reminders’ app. i should be all right for battery. maybe. i check it out anyway… asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/auroramax/

then, it happened. the sky was filled with curtains of green, streaks of purple. on a 360 degree webcam. a webcam. i felt it, my heart started to beat fast, it went into my throat, and then it sank. anxiety. all over again. everything seemed to slow down, and my thoughts? it’s monday. i can’t leave until thursday night. at the earliest. why is there a storm hitting the earth’s magnetic field tonight? this entire universe revolves around me, who the hell missed the memo, and why. but i got over it, and here i am settled back in at home, with a full fridge. freezer. whatever. and prepared on the other side of my apartment is a post with another breathtaking show of the aurora borealis, a couple weeks ago, like i had never seen before. i had never seen purples so vivid to my eyes. i’d never seen it dance so fast. i’d never before stood back from my tripod, without the cable release in my hand, given entirely in to just watch it swirl and dance, because as good as i am photographing the lights, there’s no photographing the way it’s moving straight up my head. and maybe one day, that full freezer of mine, will be up in yellowknife, where i’m convinced i belong.

#auroraborealisanxiety

we looked up out the sun roof, out the side windows, straight out of the front windshield and we were socked in. it was all a mess of orange and bright white puffy no-goodness. hours passed at a variety of still lakes, at different pull offs along the ingraham trail. cell service came and went with the kilometres driven, the clouds didn’t. we were watching the aurora dance through the now broken cloud, but it was about to become one of those nights. the kind of night i once spent with good friend, kjetil, when we started off in tromsø, along the norwegian coast, and ended up in finland still chasing for clear skies.

it was now one of those nights. it was one of those nights i would be sitting at home on my couch, glancing up to my mac where open i had a chrome browser with aurora max’s live shot of the yellowknife sky. their 360 degree webcam was filled with a transparent layer of broken cloud, and bands of aurora stretching the entire sky. we stopped the car, looked straight up, and were baffled. really baffled. ‘that’s the sky above yellowknife’. i would look straight up… ‘this is the sky above yellowknife. i don’t underSTAND!’ but as we drove back toward the city, the skies cleared, star square footage almost seemed to match cloud square footage, and finally, after four hours under starless skies, a calm green danced the night away.