Spectacular beauty of nocturnal northern skies captured by photographer pulling all-nighters

Owen Humphreys dedicates many hours and sleepless nights to capturing the stunning pictures

Owen Humphreys has been shooting some of the north of England's most famous landmarks against the night sky since he discovered the Northern Lights were a mere five minutes from his front door in Whitley Bay.

"For the Northern Lights you need no moon or as little as possible, especially in the UK," said the photographer.

"Then, very important, a clear sky. And then, even with those, you will need some kind of solar storm, such as a coronal mass injection from the sun, or in simple terms, an explosion from the sun's surface which reacts with the earth's magnetic field.

"The Milky Way is probably the easiest."

Taking the pictures has required immense patience: "Many, many hours have been spent standing in fields or on the coast, sometimes six to seven hours waiting to see if the Northern Lights appeared.

"And can I say that on very many occasions they simply didn't, so that would go down as just a sleepless night with nothing to show apart from the tranquillity of being out in the peace of the night."

PA