Aurora Chaser Embarks on Photoshoot as Geomagnetic Storm Sparks Northern Lights in Southern Alberta

Lisa Jones and two of the photos she took of aurora borealis in southern Alberta in October 2024. Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones and Rob Borovsky

As Lisa Jones exits her SUV after an early sundown in rural southern Alberta, she anticipates seeing colours in the sky she had hitherto only heard about.

Jones says she is not a night person, but all the talk of northern lights sightings on social media and predictions of a strong geomagnetic storm across the province in early October stoked her and her fiancé’s willingness to brave the frigid prairieland after hours. They drove the dark country roads around High River for hours in pursuit of subject matter she'd never seen with her own eyes.

Stumbling through a farmer’s field, carrying her Nikon and tripod and tripping over barbed wire, she eyed an angry cloud formation that covered the sky and placed their hunt for the aurora borealis in total jeopardy.

“Yet the colours of the aurora were still visible! I hurried to capture as many shots as I could before the formation dissipated,” Jones told The Epoch Times, speaking of her photoshoot of the lights glowing bright-pink through a spiderweb of cracks in the clouds.

Beyond the vivid cloud cover, a green ribbon danced over the horizon.

An aurora appears behind the clouds in October in southern Alberta. Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones

Lisa Jones captured her first photographs of the northern lights during a geomagnetic storm in October. Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones

“I couldn’t believe the vibrant colours that the camera captured,” she said. “They were even more brilliant than what I saw with the naked eye.”

Jones, a wildlife photographer who recently became enamoured with the idea of capturing the northern lights, decided the night was not over after this spectacle. She and her fiancé, Rob Borovsky, soon found the perfect foreground prop just begging to join the photoshoot.

“We saw an old abandoned barn at the side of the road,” she said. Lugging their gear, they persisted. Jones wasn’t dressed for the 5°C weather and sustained a bloody gash from tripping over a barbed wire fence hiding in a dark ditch as they plodded through a field.

“Thankfully, this injury did not require medical attention,” she said, “but I now have a big scar on my leg to remember that night by!”

Just when Jones had her Nikon d7200 mounted to capture the barn and northern lights together, the camera malfunctioned. But it turns out her iPhone Pro Max was capable of capturing aurora’s colours even more brilliantly than a standard DSLR.

Lisa Jones had never seen the aurora borealis until the evening she captured them on camera for the first time. Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones

Jones's camera malfunctioned, so she captured several images of the northern lights with her phone and was surprised how vivid they were. Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones

That technological novelty has been a popular topic for discussion on aurora-chaser Facebook groups like the ones Jones has plugged into recently; photographers are still trying to tune their camera settings to match what smartphones can do automatically.

The colours she photographed ranged from turquoise to fuchsia and hot-pink. Meanwhile, a ragged, black wedge broke the horizon line where the old, sagging barn roof protruded skyward.

“I had never seen anything this beautiful before, and I was left speechless,” Jones said. “It felt surreal, as if I were dreaming.”

Lisa Jones recently started photographing abandoned structures in Southern Alberta and has added the northern lights to her repertoire of subject matter. Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones

Lisa Jones called the colours she photographed during a geomagnetic storm in October "surreal."Courtesy of Lisa M. Jones

For Jones, who got her first camera as a Christmas gift in 2016 and soon gravitated toward capturing the natural world around her, photographing owls and wolves, this October outing was her debut aurora borealis photography photoshoot, and the first time she had seen them.

“Although Alberta is considered a great location for aurora viewing, I am not a night person,” she said. “Therefore, I always missed out on witnessing this phenomenon.”

She’s recently undertaken to expand her photography agency to include ghostly, abandoned homesteads, rustic barns, and now, the northern lights.

It was well past midnight by the time Jones and Borovsky had their fill, racking up myriad aurora photos and turning homeward. Exhausted from a long, cold night but elated, Jones says the experience was worth it.

Taking to social media, she posted a glowing spiderweb of cloud-mottled auroras on the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group for her cohorts to peruse.

“I did not come home unscathed,” she wrote. “I still have tons of photos from this magical night to sift through!”