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Rebecca Douglas: The Auroraphotographer Who’s Been to Iceland 29 Times
Rebecca Douglas, a professional photographer based in Kent in the United Kingdom, has visited Iceland 29 times and has already booked her 30th trip. The goal of every trip is to photograph the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. Douglas has been capturing this spectacular phenomenon since 2010, when it’s colors paint the sky with a dazzling array of green, purple, yellow, and blue.
Douglas has been an early adopter of “noctourism,” a trend that focuses on nighttime travel experiences. A global survey of more than 27,000 travelers showed nearly two in three travelers have considered “darker sky destinations” for activities such as stargazing, once-in-a-lifetime cosmic events, and constellation tracking.
Many activities involve the night sky, but others take place on the ground, including city tours and truffle hunting in Italy at night, as well as full moon picnics by the sea. Nocturnal wildlife safaris and stargazing are also popular.
Douglas prefers to plan her own trips, avoiding hotel packages and choosing remote accommodations to minimize light pollution. She considers the phases of the moon, the best times to see the Northern Lights, and the remoteness of the location when planning her trips.
The next total lunar eclipse will occur on March 14 and will be visible across much of the world, including the Americas, Western Europe, and Western Africa. As Douglas said, “They say you have to work hard for your art. But to me, spending my travels taking photographs at night is a privilege.”
Douglas created an online course to help people photograph the aurora borealis, and sometimes shoots from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m., braving temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. She has even captured noctilucent clouds, shimmery ice crystal clouds located high in the atmosphere, and polar stratospheric rainbow clouds.
The rise of noctourism is expected to transform travel in 2025, with requests for Northern Light viewings, night diving, and stargazing experiences rising by 25%.
