Aurora..

A day doing "office" jobs. Had a few bills to pay for the development company. Had to phone the bank about bank charges. Had to phone the electric people about the bill. And arranged a service on our boiler.

Problems with the printer to print off receipts. Lost one. Tuns out that when I "tidied" up, clearing the desk to find room to work, I turned the socket switches of when I put the guillotine in the cupboard..

I checked the fusebox, nothing had tripped. I followed the cable from printer to socket, and teates the socket by shredding a piece of papwer in the shredder. I changed the fuse to the printer cable. Still didn't work. Re-traced the cables to find it was an extra monitor I'd changed the fuse too, and the printer cable went to a socket that had been turned off. You have days like that!

Phoned the Hotel and arranged to do a harvest today, as we'll be attending a funeral tomorrow. So did a harvest and delivery.

Then started getting messages saying there was a chance of good aurora tonight, so coat and wellies on, camera fixed to tripod, lens focus set manually on a distant streetlight, ISO set to high, and checked and adjusted shutter speed to 30 seconds. And spare battery in pocket..

The show was stunning, lasting perhaps 1.5 hours. I had to come back to the house to get G, who had just got out of the shower. Dried off, and dressed with coat and hat, we both went back up the hill in torchlight to where I'd left the camera and tripod. 30 second exposures were soon changed to 20, then 10, and 5, and finally 1 second, and the ISO at 1000. These shots taken with 2.5 second exposures. The view is N, looking over the mouth of Scourie bay, with Handa Island in the foreground. Shame about the streetlamps, but they do give a foreground..

Before this, my blip was going to be the stag baying in the rut..