Tours That Include Professional Photos

Included photographs have quietly become one of the main things aurora tours compete on, and in four countries they have stopped being an add-on and become a category of their own. Of the 307 departures we list, 42 are sold primarily as photography tours, and many more mention included images in the title.

They sell because the problem is real. The aurora photographs far better than it looks, your phone will struggle, and most people want to come home with the image. Buying that outcome rather than gambling on it is a reasonable decision.

The trouble is that "photos included" covers everything from two group snapshots to a properly edited set delivered the next morning, and the listing rarely tells you which.

A census of our own catalogue, read on 10 August 2026. It counts departures filed as photography-led, not every listing that mentions a camera.

Two things in that table are worth more than the prices.

Alaska gives the pictures away. Every one of the five Fairbanks photography departures includes the images free, and three of them carry more than 500 reviews each. In a market where the cheapest seat is 163 EUR rather than Rovaniemi's 65, operators compete on what you leave with rather than on price. It is the clearest example in this catalogue of a market structure showing up directly in what you get.

One operator in 307 delivers RAW. A single Tromsø departure hands over the original files, unwatermarked, so you can edit them yourself. Everybody else delivers JPEGs, which is entirely normal and worth knowing if you had assumed otherwise. If editing the images yourself matters to you, that is a booking criterion and not a detail.

It is not only the equipment, though a fast wide lens helps. It is that the guide has done this several hundred times, knows the settings for the conditions without experimenting, and is not trying to learn manual focus in the dark at minus fifteen while the display is happening.

There is also the matter of being in the photograph. Getting a decent image of yourself with the aurora behind you requires someone to light you briefly without ruining the exposure, and someone else to stand still for eight seconds. Doing it alone with a phone propped on a rock does not work well.

The honest framing: your own attempts will produce something, especially with a modern phone and a tripod. The guide's will produce the picture you actually wanted. Our page on what a phone can capture covers where that line falls.

The copyright question is the one people never ask and occasionally regret. It is entirely normal for an operator to keep the rights and licence you personal use, and that is fine for almost everyone. It stops being fine if you intended to sell the image or hand it to a publication.

Included photography does not improve your odds of seeing anything. If the sky stays shut, the guide has nothing to photograph either, and no clause anywhere converts a cloudy night into images.

It is worth being clear about that because the two things get bundled in people's minds. A tour with photos included and a fixed itinerary is still a tour that cannot move when the weather closes in. Mobility first, photography second. On a clear night almost any format delivers; on a marginal night only the ones that can drive do.

Where that bites hardest is exactly where the photography market is largest. Our cloud data puts Rovaniemi at 20.0% usable-sky nights in November and 22.3% in December, which is when its seventeen photography departures are busiest. In Fairbanks the same months run at 41.3% and 47.4%. Same product, very different chance of there being anything to shoot.

Then buy the tour on group size rather than on included photos. A guide with eight people can walk round and set up each camera individually; a guide with fifty cannot, and you will spend the display fiddling with menus.

Ask specifically whether the guide helps with camera settings, and whether tripods are provided. Some operators carry spares, which saves you packing one. A tripod is not optional for a real exposure, and it is the single piece of equipment people most often leave at home. One of the Kiruna departures lends you a camera and a tripod outright, which works if you arrived in Lapland with nothing but a phone.

It helps to know what you are buying when a listing says photos included, because the gap between a guide's setup and yours is mostly not about money.

The typical kit is a full frame body with a wide fast lens, something in the 14 to 24 mm range at f/2.8 or faster, on a solid tripod. Wide, because the aurora is usually much larger than people expect and often directly overhead. Fast, because every stop of aperture buys a shorter exposure, and shorter exposures preserve the structure in a moving display.

The part you cannot buy is the repetition. A guide shoots this several hundred nights a season, knows the settings for the conditions without testing, and can adjust in the dark by feel. On your first aurora night you will be learning manual focus while the best part of the display is happening.

The other thing they carry is a light. Getting a person properly lit against an aurora needs a brief, weak, well-aimed burst during a multi-second exposure, and it is a two-person job with practice behind it. This is the shot most people want and the one they almost never manage alone.

None of this makes your own attempts pointless. A modern phone on a tripod produces something worth keeping, and we cover exactly how far that goes on our page about what a phone can capture. It does explain why the included photographs command a premium and why people pay it.

In most of Europe the photographer owns the copyright in an image the moment it is taken, and that does not change because you appear in it or because you paid for the tour. So the default position is that the operator owns the photographs and grants you a licence to use them.

For almost everyone this is entirely fine. The licence granted is normally personal use, which covers sharing with family, printing, and posting on social media, and operators generally encourage the last one because it markets them.

It stops being fine in two situations. If you intend to sell the image, license it to a publication, or use it commercially, you need that agreed explicitly and in writing, because personal use does not cover it. And if you would rather not appear in the operator's own marketing, ask: many operators reuse customer photographs in listings and social media, and while you can usually opt out, you have to say so.

The practical version is a single question at booking: what may I do with the photographs, and what will you do with them? A clear answer takes one line and prevents the entire problem.

Worth it if this is a one-off trip, you want an image of yourselves under the lights, and you have no intention of learning manual exposure in the cold. That combination describes most visitors, and the premium is usually modest against the cost of getting there.

Worth it if you are travelling as a couple or family, because the shot of your group properly lit against an aurora is the one you cannot take yourself and the one you will actually keep.

Not worth it if you already shoot and brought a camera. You will get better frames from your own position, chosen by you, and what you want from the operator is a small group and a guide who will help with settings.

Not worth it as a substitute for mobility. A shorter tour with photos included and a fixed itinerary is a worse purchase than a longer chase without them, because on a marginal night the chase is the thing that produces a sky to photograph at all.

The test is simple enough: included photography improves what you take home from a successful night. It does nothing whatever to make the night successful.

• The census above: all 307 departures in our catalogue across Norway, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Alaska and Canada, read on 10 August 2026, counting those filed as photography-led and how the included images are described and delivered.
• Cloud figures: ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo, eleven seasons, with method and thresholds on our when the sky opens page.
• Copyright default: under European copyright law the photographer holds the rights in an image on creation, with the customer typically receiving a personal-use licence. Terms vary by operator and by country.
• EU consumer information rules, which require material terms to be clear before purchase: Your Europe.
• Camera settings and equipment discussed here follow standard aurora photography practice; see our camera settings page for the detail.