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Rebecca Douglas has been to Iceland 29 times. And you’ve already booked your 30th trip.
The goal of each trip is the same: to photograph the Northern Lights, or Northern Lights.
Douglas has been photographing this spectacular phenomenon since 2010. Its colors, which can paint the sky in a dazzling array of green, purple, yellow and blue, are the result of solar particles reacting with gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere . with the current solar cycle Reaching the peak of its 11-year period, the lights are expected to become even more prominent over the next four years.
Douglas, a professional photographer Based in Kent, UK, he also travels annually to Finland, Norway and Iceland to photograph the night sky. But he said he was also able to photograph the northern lights from the English countryside last year.
The rise of ‘night tourism’
Douglas has unknowingly been an early adopter of “noctourism,” a trend that focuses on overnight travel experiences.
Booking.com named it top travel trend for 2025describing it as a desire to “abandon the daytime crowds for the magic of midnight.” A global survey by the company of more than 27,000 travelers showed that nearly two in three travelers said they had considered “darker sky destinations” for activities such as stargazing (72%), once-in-a-lifetime cosmic events (59 %) and constellation tracking (57%).
The Northern Lights, seen from Rebecca Douglas’ holiday accommodation in Lofoten, an archipelago in Norway.
Source: Rebecca Douglas Photography
Most activities involve the night sky, but others occur on land, from city tours and truffle hunting in Italy at night to full moon picnics by the sea.
Luxury travel company Wayfairer Travel said night tourism experiences increased 25% last year, with requests to see the northern lights in Norway and Iceland, but also night diving in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea from Egypt. Also popular, according to the company, are night wildlife safaris in Zambia and Kenya and stargazing in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
“Night tourism will transform travel by 2025 as nighttime travelers increasingly seek unique nighttime experiences,” said company CEO Jay Stevens.
Travelers can sign up to hunt truffles at night with professional hunters and their dogs.
Stefano Guidi | Getty Images News | fake images
Eclipse chasing could become a new “bucket list” experience, according to luxury travel operator Scott Dunn.
“Travelers are venturing to remote corners of the world to witness these celestial spectacles, and Greenland’s High Arctic… will be the next must-see destination thanks to its remote, light pollution-free coastlines,” a Scott spokesperson said. Dunn.
But trips don’t have to be that far, as hotels from Hawaii to Austria now offer stargazing activities. The next total lunar eclipse will occur on March 14 and will be visible in much of the worldincluding America, Western Europe and West Africa, according to NASA.
In search of darkness
Douglas avoids hotel packages and prefers to plan his own trips, as he plans many activities in the evening. She also said she prefers to stay away from large groups, which are often made up of people new to nightlife who unknowingly create light pollution with their smartphones and camera flashes.
The northern lights, seen from Iceland.
Source: Rebecca Douglas Photography
Douglas plans most of his trips around the best time to see the northern lights, usually between August and April, he said. Also choose accommodations away from cities and even neighbors, since a single street or household light can compromise photographs, he said.
“I spend a lot of time looking for accommodation on Google Maps,” he said. “If there’s lighting in the footage, I’ll ask the presenter if it’s possible to turn off the outside lighting… Even some of the less active shows can be really beautiful if you’re in a really dark area.”
Also consider the phases of the moon, he said.
An aurora storm seen from Elmley Nature Reserve in Kent, UK.
Source: Rebecca Douglas Photography
“In those two weeks around the new moon, you have the darkest skies possible. And then it’s not just the aurora that is at its best, but the stars are just stunning,” he said. “You can see the Milky Way and it’s just this rainbow of dust and brightness in the sky.”
Douglas created a online course to help people photograph the Northern Lights.
At night, it also photographs noctilucent clouds (clouds of shimmering ice crystals located high in the atmosphere) and polar stratospheric rainbow clouds, he said. He sometimes shoots from 8 pm to 5 am and has been outside in temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
“They say you have to work hard for your art,” Douglas said.
But for her, spending her trips taking photographs at night is “a privilege,” she said.
