Lofoten Islands - Norway - Northern Lights in winter landscape

We have been on Lofoten islands in Norway from 12-26 February 2026 and we have seen some amazing Northern Lights. Inspired by other photographers, it was on my bucket list to make some scenic photos of the Northern Lights with the dramatic mountain backdrops of Lofoten, at Skagsanden beach, Lofoten, Storsandnes beach and at Hamnoy/Reine. Due to careful planning of the locations, following the weather satellite images (cloud cover) and aurora forecasts I finally managed to capture these images, which I wanted to share. I used windy app for low/mid/high clouds, hello aurora, glendale and spaceweatherlive apps on my phone. Photos taken with Canon R10 with Sigma RF-S 12mm F1.4 and tripod. Mostly ISO 800 and 2-3sec exposure, at F1.4-2.0. I slipped at some point during my trip and my R7 got in contact with seawater and died....I bought the only available R10 body on the islands, which basically saved my photo trip . I was happy with the R10 results, Might keep it. Photos edited in Photomator in RAW format on Mac, including denoise tool and lens correction applied afterwards with Darktable.

pic 2 looks evil...

Fantastic photos, and the Northern Lights are on my bucket list. How was the February weather?

Photofarmer said:

pic 2 looks evil...

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Yes indeed, now that you say!

MikeZ said:

Fantastic photos, and the Northern Lights are on my bucket list. How was the February weather?

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Thanks, We had a lot of snow (blizards) during our stay, you never know in Lofoten, the weather can change within 15 minutes. We had few days and nights that we had clear skies and that was our luck. We were well prepared with the right weather apps, satellite data, cloud cover to find places on the island to see the lights. This week its rainy/wet, so we had a good week in that perspective. 2nd half of Feb is better then first half of Feb normally. I hear people say that March is a better month for more stable weather, still snow landscape and a high change on northern light due to the aligment of the earth magnetic field. I will certainly go back one day...

Those are awesome, well done!