Edit
To provide some context given the messages below. I was a professional photographer, and understand that getting a good photo is a skill. Exposure time, timing, location, and many other factors come into play when capturing a great image.
Seeing the aurora was a fantastic experience. The purpose of this post is to help reduce FOMO of those who could not see it. Many people who don’t know these things will imagine dancing lights in the sky of brilliance, and will be saddened by what they missed. While they did miss something, it’s important for them to know exactly what they missed.
Edit2 I should also note this is why I enjoy when photographers post gear, conditions, and settings alongside results. It tells viewers what was real.
It’s not an Instagram filter, it’s exposure time. I set my camera on night mode and it took pictures during 4-10 seconds and the results were incredible
But even with the naked eye the lights were incredible last night
We arrived to the park before sunset and the biggest display was right when it became dark enough and a lot of people started arriving 2-3 hours later after watching pictures of other people and they were complaining that it didn’t look as magical as the pictures. Lots of those people who arrived late were also using flashlights and just taking pictures of using their phones, not letting their eyes get used to the dark conditions or even really looking at the sky
This. Thank you for explaining it correctly, I’ve seen sooo many people saying it’s just filters. Of course, there will almost always be some colour correction but the way a camera a camera can capture the light is different to the naked eye.
I can barely see it with the naked eye, but my night sight android camera makes it bright reddish.
Some posters will have modified the image but not all.
Yeah I took a couple shots last night with my S21 Ultra and it just made the sky look like the old default wallpaper from like Mac OS X
As a Samsung user I would expect a moon up on that night sky.
I am all with you on editing images and creating a “fake” reality on social platforms.
But this poses the question: how much has digital tech become part of our perception and is digitally enhancing a picture really much of a difference if it just helps us see more of the actual reality? I don’t think increasing exposure and contrast is changing reality, it just squeezes down what we cannot see so easily and makes it visible in that narrow slit that our human perception can actually process. We use digital editing nowadays that it has become part of our whole process of perceiving reality, so much so that the digital picture litterally replaces what we saw with our eyes - simply because digital photography has become an extension, much like glasses, shoes, cars are litterally a part of our body.
Imho as long as it doesn’t create pixels from scratch that weren’t there in the first place, it is still viable to polish a picture of the sky to make it more appealing. I mean no buttcheeks were enhanced here, no eyes replaced or lips turned i to a grotesque sausage mouth freakshow 😅
