After a tiring night in the village of Kaamanen in the north of Finland, I slept for only a few hours and took the bus to the city of Rovaniemi, further south. Before going to the hotel and resting, I went to a nearby pizzeria to eat. As in many of my travels, it was a Turkish pizzeria...

   We started chatting while eating. At that time, when I was told that the whole city was visible from the terrace of a hotel called Sky Hotel (Hotels Sky Ounasvaara), the idea of taking pictures of the northern light over the city came to my mind and I asked them to take me there despite my tiredness. After dinner, one of them drove me to that hotel in his car.

























   When I went out to the hotel terrace, I saw the Northern Lights over the city...

After taking enough photos, I went down to the reception and asked the receptionist to call a taxi so that I could go to the hotel where I would be staying and sleep. While we were waiting, I mentioned during the conversation that I was taking northern light photos on the terrace. After a while, while looking at the computer screen, he said that a solar storm was expected for tomorrow!.. "Is it what I predicted?!" When I immediately asked for details, he said that the activity was so great that it could be seen even from the south of Scandinavia. I realized that this was most likely a solar storm called solarmax, which occurs once every 11 years and is the largest of the sun's most active periods.

   Another dream of mine was about to come true.

   We were in March at that time, I had taken northern light photographs in Scandinavia a few months before, but the reason I went again in March was because I learned about the phenomenon called solarmax.

  Although it is recommended to travel in winter because the longer night time increases the chance of seeing the northern lights, I learned in an article about the northern lights that the most active times are autumn and spring. Considering that although we were coming to the end of the 11-year cycle, solarmax did not happen, even though I was not an expert on these matters, I planned a trip in March, predicting that there was a high probability of this happening in the spring, and my prediction came true while I was there. But I would learn the next night that even more would happen.

   After the good news, I went to the hotel peacefully and slept for a long time after being tired for days. When I woke up, I didn't want much action for a while and since the hotel was in the center of the city and going and returning would be even more difficult, I didn't want to bother going somewhere myself, so instead I called a northern lights tour company to take me. Afterwards, I looked at how far south the northern lights were seen in the American continent, which was night at that time, and examined the solar activity data from the application on my phone. While I normally rejoice when activity strength is 4 out of 10, all I saw that day was 10. A huge solar storm had begun.


  In the evening, a minibus belonging to the tour company came to pick me up. Even though we were in the city, as soon as I stepped out, I saw a northern light passing over us. Saying this before getting into the minibus, I immediately set up my tripod and started taking pictures. Hearing that it was the northern light, the other customers in the minibus immediately got off and started to take photos like me until the tour guide reminded us that we were going to a better place. The fact that the city was visible despite light pollution was a sign of how strong the activity was that night.


  We got into the minibus and headed to an area southwest of Rovaniemi. I was going crazy seeing the northern lights along the way. When I saw a nice place to take a photo, I suggested stopping and taking it, but the tour guide said that the area we were passing through at that moment was a place where the wildest animals in Finland were found. Even though I had the idea of taking a photo of the northern light passing over wild animals, I didn't say anything :D

   After watching the northern lights for about an hour while in the tour minibus, we finally arrived at the area where we would take photos. After a little walk, we started taking photos in an open place. We were surrounded by purple and green northern lights.































































 




After a long time, the northern lights began to slowly rotate and gather in one place, and I immediately focused on that place. As it spun, it got faster and brighter, so I quickly tried to reduce the exposure after each photo. Very quickly, they turned into a whirling tornado and suddenly spread throughout the sky... This was beyond what I imagined. More than a solar storm, I watched a northern lights tornado form in front of me...

  Normally when I'm in total darkness, I expose the stars for about 20 seconds due to the Earth's rotation, because at longer exposure they start to appear as lines. I open the aperture to F 2.8 to let more light in. But that night the northern lights were so bright that I had to cut the exposure to 0.8 seconds and set the aperture to F4.