As most people know, Port Angeles, Victoria, and Vancouver aren't exactly next-door neighbours.
The three cities are spread out over 130 km and two land masses, but a Seattle-based photographer took an amazing photo of all three cities lined up with the northern lights above them this summer.
Jordan Rasmussen, a real estate photographer (with a passion for landscapes), was headed to Shi Shi Beach on Washington's west coast with his fiancee for her birthday weekend in August.
Along the way, they stopped at Hurricane Ridge above Port Angeles to camp and caught the stunning photo without even realizing it.
"I didn't know what I was capturing," says Rasmussen.
Several regional landmarks visible in the image
The most obvious feature in the photo, and the reason Rasmussen set up his camera, are the massive, bright green northern lights in the sky. The shot, (a 1.6-second exposure) is filled with the shimmering phenomenon.
But just below it, stacked because of the angle that Rasmussen shot at, are Port Angeles (in the foreground in a dip in a ridge), Victoria (with the bright lights of Esquimalt Harbour's naval base recognizable), and Vancouver, bright yellow 140 km away from Rasmussen.
"I was super excited," he says of realizing the scope of the photos.
A variety of details can be picked out, from the red lights above Trial Island off Victoria's coast to Saturna Island (lumpy and to the right) to Grouse Mountain's lights.
The northern lights themselves are quite bright, even appearing to cast a shadow of a cloud. Rasmussen was able to take video with his phone that captured them well; he's also working on a timelapse of the experience.
How he got the amazing shot
It wasn't Rasmussen's plan to get the photo.
"This is probably one of the luckiest photos I've captured," he tells V.I.A.
The addition of Hurricane Ridge was late, and he had no idea the northern lights were going to be active until he got an alert on his phone and decided to find a good vantage point to set up.
"They were poppin," he says.
Given he hadn't planned the shot, it was more of a "spray-and-pray" situation, and he focused on getting a series of shots of the bright green aurora borealis, without really looking at what else was in the frame.
"I didn't realize I had Victoria and Vancouver in the photo," he says. "When I got home and put it on my big monitor and blew it up it looked amazing."
He's only shared a single frame so far, but he's working on a timelapse of the shot as well.
