Guest Speaker: Zoltan Kenwell
Alberta Aurora  Photography– A Journey into the Night
by Bill Trout, IACC Outings Chair
Picture
Zoltan Kenwell © Gilles Simard
​At the February 12, 2015 Club meeting, we had the wonderful opportunity to welcome Zoltan Kenwell to give us a presentation on Northern Lights and Night Time photography. Since I am an avid Northern Lights photographer, I found his presentation to be very entertaining and informative. Not only did he showcase a lot of his work, he also gave us great information on night time shooting, especially with respect to personal safety.

To give you a quick background on Zoltan, he specializes in Northern Lights photography and time lapse videos. He has had many images published, including in National Geographic.

As well, his images have been used in various ways, including being placed on a custom MasterCard, and as part of a background image package found on the latest Apple operating systems.

Zoltan is probably the reason why I became passionate about Northern Lights photography.

A few years ago, when I was on the Internet, I came across one of Zoltan’s Aurora images and was completely awestruck. More importantly, I used to think you had to travel to Yellowknife, Churchill or Iceland to get fantastic Aurora images, and I was completely floored to find out that the majority of his images were taken in the Edmonton area. This inspired me to try and get some, and so my obsession began.
 Picture© Bill Trout (taken with Zoltan standing right beside him)
Back in April 2012, I had the fortunate luck to be out photographing a great geomagnetic storm, and Zoltan happened to come upon me just north of Camrose. This was a truly exciting moment for me, because it could be compared to a black and white photographer coming across Ansell Adams in the field. We hung out for a short time, and, in that time, he gave a lot of advice. It was fantastic to see him work. What is truly exciting for me is that if you check out his website he has a time lapse video of that night called “Prairie Light.” It gives me goose bumps every time I watch it because I was standing right beside him when he took many of the images.

Check his website (www.infocusimagery.com/) to read about him and his fantastic work. With Solar maximum still in effect, I encourage everyone to try to get some Northern Lights images. It is a truly rewarding experience and every time I go out,
​
I almost always see something new and wonderful.
I go out often and anyone who wants to tag along
is more than welcome. The price is a large Timmie’s on the way out of town