Doug Brook Photography

Welcome to Doug Brook Photography, Yorkton, Saskatchewan

May 6, 2018 - The Aurora show on Sunday, May 6 was even better than Saturday, May 5! We headed east this time to an old church east of Saltcoats. The aurora stretched across the north horizon and well into the sky above us. The colors were some of the best I've seen while living in Saskatchewan, We shot a lot of photos but the one to the right with some light painting on the church was our favorite.

Once again tonight, STEVE made an appearance for us. Tonight he showed up twice though. First right above the church at the beginning of the evening and then again later on. The second time was incredible. It stretched all the way from the east horizon, over our heads and then to the west horizon. My 14mm lens wasn't wide enough to get it all in since it was straight overhead.

May 5, 2018 - The Aurora activity early in May was spectacular. The best part was the temperatures had finally warmed up and the snow was gone so no more trekking through knee deep snow in -30 Celsius weather. Saturday, May 5th we headed up to Good Spirit Lake. The light show was incredible! The aurora extended from the north horizon directly overhead and even a bit to the south. Although the middle of the lake still had ice on it, the outer edge along the shore was open and gave some great aurora reflections.

The image to the left was looking south towards the provincial park and shows some aurora visible to the south. The best part of the evening though was getting to photograph Aurora STEVE. STEVE is a purple and green ribbon in the sky. The green picket fence lights following the ribbon in two spots verify it was STEVE. For more information on STEVE you can go to Wikipedia.

April 2018 - Aurora activity in in April was OK but nothing spectacular. There was cloud cover on the really good evenings. Still managed to get out and capture a few images and experiment with a few things. Two images that really pleased me were one of the church southeast of Otthon and the Milky Way. I was so focused on light painting on the church that I didn't notice the meteor in the background. The Lyrid meteor shower was occurring that evening. I didn't realize I had captured one until a couple days later when reviewing my images.

We finished up shooting an old house north of Saltcoats around 2:40 am but before packing up, I decided to turn the camera to the southeast and see if I could pickup a Milky Way image. There was nothing visible to the naked eye but I used a star app on my phone to point me in the proper direction, raised my ISO to 6400 and took several images using 15 to 30 second exposures. The image on the right was the best of the bunch and turned out better than I expected for my first Milky Way shoot.

March 2018 - Another great evening spent chasing the Aurora Borealis. I started out at a small 9 hole golf course east of town with a beautiful old structure as the clubhouse. The ground on the south side of the clubhouse drops off quickly so it made getting photos of it along with the Northern Lights difficult. With my Ultra-Wide Angle 14mm lens I was able to stay close enough to the clubhouse to get some of it in and still being high enough to catch the Northern Lights.

March 2018 - After a big dumping of snow early in the week, the sun finally came out and I managed to get out with the camera. The wildlife were really moving after the storm and I managed to find several deer and some Hungarian Partridge. The highlight of the day though was a moose I noticed bedded down just inside the bush line along a grid road. It stood up as I slowed down but didn't seem too alarmed until the RM grader came along and the moose took off deeper into the bush. I explored a few other areas for a while and then returned to the same spot thirty minutes later. It was standing about 30 yards back in the bush, browsing on poplar branches but seemed to be heading my way so I setup with my Nikon 200-500mm lens. The moose kept working it's way towards me browsing on branches and I managed to get several great shots through the trees. Just as the first moose got to the edge of the bush, I noticed a second moose coming in from behind me. It joined up with the first moose and the two of them fed along the edge of the bush for thirty minutes until I finally had to leave. I ended up with approximately 300 photos. A few of my favorites are on the right.

February 2018 - It's been a long winter and there hasn't been any racing going on to photography. I started trying some Northern Lights photography and while editing the photographs, I noticed the rotation of the earth's impact on the stars. I've always been intrigued by the photographs I've seen of star circles so I merged twelve of my northern lights photos together to see if anything appeared. There were some short star trails but 12 photos just wasn't enough. A few days later I headed out again with everything I needed to collect a larger series of shots. I used my Ultra-Wide Angle 14mm lens, set at f/4.0 on ISO 500 with a 30 second shutter speed. The timer took a photo every 45 seconds for an hour and 15 minutes and collected 98 photos. I also tried some light painting on the side of the grain elevator. The results are on the right:

Aurora over Castleton Church

Aurora STEVE

Aurora over Good Spirit Lake

Aurora STEVE over Good Spirit Lake Provincial Park

Lyrid Meteor over Otthon Church while Light Painting Church

First Milky Way Image

Aurora over Cherrydale Golf Course Clubhouse