It has been a couple of weeks since one of the most impressive auroras was displayed across the UK. Here in the Western Isles it was mostly cloudy, but I took the opportunity to eye-up some compositions for future night sky photography.

I still find it difficult to process aurora images. There’s a balance between over-egging the colours, reducing noise levels without loosing detail, and keeping the images appropriate. But then no one wants to see a flat, lifeless image of the aurora either.

The sky is not enough to make an impressive image. Foreground interest, for place and scale, is perhaps more important than the light show.

This image was captured from the village of Enaclete, Isle of Lewis.

Another from my experimental project, finding abstract landscapes shaped by the sea meeting the sand.

I’m liking where this series of images is headed and see it progressing to a triptych of framed prints.

Captured in the hour before sunrise at North Berwick, East Lothian.

Having now moved to the Isle of Lewis I don’t feel like we get this same light during that hour before sunrise. There are the amazing sunsets, but I do prefer the tranquility and the calmness that the blue hour creates.

Originally created for an online photography competition, this ethereal image invokes a sense of time(travel) and space.

The double exposure was created in camera with a cinesoft lens filter to enhance the dreamlike feel.

The first image is of an oak slave clock from c1920, placed on an oak table to add texture.

The second image is of a unique canvas artwork produced one hundred years later in 2020, containing antique watch faces from the previous decades.