This was from the largest aurora display I’ve ever seen, and the photo was both a literal and metaphorical shot in the dark.
The sky started erupting shortly after sunset and it was absolutely everywhere – all over the sky with more colours than I’d ever seen in an aurora. It was too much sky to capture in one image, even with a 14mm lens, so my natural reaction was to try and capture it as a stitched panorama. As soon as I pressed the shutter I remembered that the odds of an aurora shot stitching as a panorama are pretty low (due to the movement in the light between photos), but I decided to attempt it anyway. I had no idea if it would workout until I got home and gave processing a shot.
Good news! It worked! This is a 9 image panorama encompassing over 180 degrees of horizon – a whole lot of sky! This was an incredible reward after a long hike up into the alpine under heavy cloud. What a great moment for the clouds to break and reveal a show unlike any I’d seen before.