Dang it, I missed the live call again.. Sorry for not attending, I lost track of time yesterday and missed the timing.. I will try better next week ! To answer to what you said about my submission, Here's what I could note: -> I had to focus manually, and it was a bit difficult, but I tried to focus on myself. as you said, the D810 is really bad when it comes to autofocus at night. Also as you probably guessed , I'm both subject and photographer, so I had to ask a friend to press the button ( instead of a delay, so they could check a bit for the frame and tell me if I was placed at the right spot ) ->6s makes it hard to have a sharp subject due to movement, I think the focus is not too bad, but movement makes it difficult to tell -> I might have moved a bit haha, especially with all the gear on my back -> Yes, having faces ( and part of the body) would have been nice. I think I was too focused on having a sharp shot and didn't really reconsider the framing on the spot.. damn I have to go back to take some other shots now....😂 --> As for the timing, we were on a hike and when we noticed this aurora, (one on the most intense we saw that night) So we looked for a good spot and I set up the tripod to take pictures ... It might have lasted like 20minutes, for all the shots ( of course lots of tries with "You moved!" "You're not placed right!" ," Sorry I missed the focus"... well, if you already took some pictures with some friends, with all the excitement and all, I'm sure you know what I mean). I might share the other shots for comparison If you're interested (I may have a "clean" one with no other subject than the light ❤️) Shooting in the dark was a bit of a challenge... especially with autofocus, which is completly lost and unusable in the dark. Add to this that your subjects must remain completely still for at least 6 or 8seconds... yep you can have some kind of blurry shots ( Especially when the subjects are your non-models friends, waiting in the cold (that night it was around -10°C 🥶). This is something I want to train myself at. Shooting in the dark IS the challenge I bought a camera for, for my smartphone is really limited in those ranges.

Looks great !

@Bob Fischer

@Bob Fischer I think it's much closer to (at least what I understood) the original intention described by @Gary Lewis . It's at least how I would have tried to convey this idea. Thank you for your feedback on this Bob !

The look in this darkness really opens for interpretation ! Love the render too! How did you manage to get that lighting ?

@Cristina Garces were you in a studio ? Or is it homemade lighting. I would gladly take my chances to reproduce this effect 😁

@Wittawat Sadindum thank you for your feedback Wittawat! To be honest I didn't think that deep other that the angle when taking that picture ! Actually I wanted to create an original memory with my friends and we all got our silhouette in front of this gorgeous aurora. And I did the rest in post. But I'm glad you can read this picture so well ! You're right, What a moment it was 😁.

@Cristina Garces I think seeing the northern light is probably the most beautiful thing I saw. As a fan of night skies I just couldn't stop looking up. However, you'd be surprised of how they look bare eyes, the color mostly come from the (more or less) long exposure, otherwise it kinda looks like a weirdly lit cloud. Only most intense aurora have this green color but it's not as bright as you can see on pictures. Yet. It still a magnifiscent event to assist to. As they are often short and moving (as the passing of clouds I would say, but faster)