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.