“An Invitation to Dance” — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

“And to be delightful is not some factor of trying to make yourself look delightful. It is to do things that are delightful to you.” - Alan Watts, The Web of Life, Part 15: An Invitation to Dance

Taken on our 2nd night backpacking, much of the evening (and the next) we spent on this unnamed frozen lake, with real air temperatures around 0F (-18C) and wind chill 10-20 degrees lower than that. This was a spectacular auroral substorm with the aurora moving rapidly over the entire sky like electric currents, bright enough to read a book!

Aurora is often described as a dancing lady, and here I think the aurora actually looks like a woman dancing in a flowing dress, which is why I called this image “An Invitation to Dance”. At the same time, the phrase reminds me of the lecture of the same name by Alan Watts that I’ve quoted above, and this was, without a doubt, one of the most delightful experiences of my life.

Sastrugi — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Shot at sunset on the first evening of a 7-day winter backpacking tour led by Marc Adamus. On that tour I learned this word - sastrugi - a Russian word to describe patterns in the snow formed by wind, just like this one.

Last Sunset — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Ice Bubbles and Tombstone — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

An unexpected treat of this trip were the incredible ice bubbles we found on every lake of the entire trip, surpassing those of even the famous Abraham Lake in the Canadian Rockies, and with far more impressive mountain backdrops.

Aurora over Mt. Monolith — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Our very first night backpacking in Tombstone. I really struggled to find a composition I was happy with, but Panos Laskarakis, one of my favorite wildlife photographers ever (or as he calls them, “aniscapes”), found this really awesome cracked boulder pointing towards Monolith.

For full-disclosure, the aurora in this image was composited from a previous night. However, the aurora over this mountain was actually even more spectacular, but its high-speed made it incredibly difficult to capture, so I used a shot of aurora that was more slowly moving. Additionally, I took care to make sure that the compass direction of the images was approximately the same, since the shape of aurora is oriented around the magnetic North Pole.

Lone Tree - Yukon Territory, Canada.

Taken from a moving car on our way back to Whitehorse. If we didn’t need to catch our flights out, it would have been a great morning for more moody photography.

Rodrigo and the Shark’s Tooth — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

An image of talented photographer Rodrigo Viveros, whom I had the pleasure of meeting on this trip, in front of the famous Shark’s Tooth face. I had no intention of taking a picture of Rodrigo here, I was just testing this composition, but I was lucky he ended up being right in the middle of the frame, and with such a great pose!

For full disclosure, this is one of my images which is not representative of a real scene that I saw. The snow, ice, Rodrigo, and the mountain were all in the original photograph, however the fog and some of the low clouds were added in Photoshop to give the scene a different atmosphere.

If you want this image as a desktop background, check out this blog post.

Dramatic Skies over the Shark’s Tooth — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Quiet Night — Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Our third night of the Yukon trip. While I am happy with this image, it also represents the greatest regret of my entire photography journey. On this evening I stayed up until 1 AM, and because the aurora was faint and simple like in this photograph, hardly moving from this one spot, I decided to go to sleep in my tent. Those who stayed up, were treated to one of the greatest aurora shows they’d ever seen, starting at around 2:30 and lasting hours.

Additionally, high winds that day had blown snow off the ice and created spectacular foreground and reflection opportunities like this one, and most of the people who stayed up had the best night of photography of their entire lives.

The title is almost a joke about that. The image depicts a “quieter” showing of aurora than some of my other pictures from previous nights, but additionally, I wish that I had woken up instead of sleeping through the night 😅.