Dear Rudy, Thank you for your feedback and joining our Northern Lights tour. For me it seems that you have had very personal issue with our guide Oren who has been one of the most liked guides in our team and have received nothing but positive feedback over this winter. It is very sad for me to learn that you have felt such a way on a tour that has been otherwise great and very well organized. I feel that booking your place on small group adventure (with total 8 people) as your wife is professional photographer might be an issue here, as you have clearly been annoyed by other people and the things that are happening around you. If we would have known this beforehand, we would have definitely recommended a private tour for you, on which your wife will get all the attention and there is nothing around you to disturb her. With proper communication, this could have been easily avoided as we always recommend private tour for every professional photographer joining our tours. I will let our guide Oren to answer your feedback, as you have brought this issue very personal level in your feedback. Oren's answer: First of all I must say I was surprised and got hurt personally from your review, and I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart that this was your experience from our tour. I experienced things differently and so did the rest of the group - I got good reviews from the very same tour. I think that with proper communication between your wife and me, your bad experience that you described would have been solved already during the tour right away. I've been working in the guiding field for more than 16 years and I never got such a review like the one you left. You wrote a very detailed review so I will try to address the things you mention. About clothing and equipment we provide in our office before going out for tours and expeditions - safety is always number one in all our activities. In the arctic there is extreme conditions and temperatures can drop rapidly, so having warm thermal overalls, gloves, hats and boots and woolen socks to keep the body warm to avoid hypothermia and frostbites is very important. For some guests there is better clothing already when they arrive and for some there is not enough clothing. As a team we need to be patient and wait for all the guests in the group to be ready for the journey. Same with extra equipment we provide for the photographing like tripods for cameras and smartphones as well as rental cameras. About asking our guests about their camera settings: Not all our guests are professional photographers, and one of the main service we provide in our photography tours is to help the guests to set up their cameras and take photographs of the northern lights on their own. I'm very sorry if your wife got offended by the night photography tips I gave her. About light disturbing in the night photography: I always recommend all the participants of the group to take a good distance from each other, so that we will not be in front of each other. On the location we have been and like in all the other private locations we have, there is very wide and open space for photographing. This is one of the biggest advantages to be in a small group on a private location and not supporting mass tourism. Indeed, sometimes we still need to communicate with each other so that we will not disturb each other with lights while photographing. If we are too near to each other or the angle of the camera is including your neighbor photographer, in this case we always communicate. Your wife went quite far, and I asked her several times if everything is ok and didn’t hear complaints. Part of the service we provide is also photographing people with the northern lights, I understand and respect that some people will not want to be in front of the camera, but in order to photograph the rest of the group, the guide photographer must use flashlight in order to focus the camera to the face of the model and also to use flash. But as I said before, one of the main targets of this tour is that our guests themselves will take pictures of the northern lights with their own cameras, and the guide will do EVERYTHING to help them to get good photos. In this case I failed with the communication with your wife and for this I’m very sorry. Even though, as I said, I did try to communicate with her in the field and did ask if everything is going well. About moving away from the group, the truth is the opposite what you mentioned. As I said, I’m encouraging to take a big distance from each other. You might refer to a guidance I gave when we arrived to a location, that I don’t recommend going too far on the lake, because in this area there was about 20-30 cm of cold water on the top of the ice, so in order to not get your feet wet and cold we give information about the surroundings. You and your wife were in the opposite direction. About your sentence I wanted your wife pictures to fail, I must say I got really hurt, because the main task we have is that our guests will get good pictures with the equipment they have, and for this we put lots of concentration and effort every night. I must say, I did try many times to communicate with your wife (we both talked English), and I felt she rejected my offer for help. And about the pictures that we take for our team members with our own cameras, they are free of charge! It is included on the price of the tour. If some guests want the highest quality, original versions of the pictures in order to have a large prints, then they can pay extra to get the maximum quality pictures. This way we respect the professionalism of each of our photographer. But pictures we provide free of charge from the tour are in good quality for social media and small prints. And about your last sentence, I will not answer directly to what you wrote, I would just say it is not appropriate to have this kind of personal attack in a review. I would address to the reason you wrote it, that I probably asked a few times where are you from, as I said before, safety in the tour is number one, and when a guide needs to drive on icy roads in the dark, with reindeers that might appear on the road, and to think also about the weather, locations and to give useful informative information about the northern lights and how to chase them, sometimes, not all the information said in the car is being recorded in the memory, especially if the guide have attention deficit disorder like me (-: I must say, I have a very different experience from what you described, because me and your wife were talking in the car about her being professional photographer and we had a very nice and positive conversation about different aspects of real estate photography and many other subjects. After all this I find this personal attack very weird. Finally, I want to say that I apologize from the bottom of my heart for your experience, I think it would look different with better communication. I wish you and your wife all the best. Oren.

Hi there, Thank you very much for your 5 star review for our Northern Lights tour! I’m very happy that you got to see the Northern Lights after a proper Aurora chase with Victoria and also got some pictures from the tour! 😊 The second part and update of your review and comments: “don’t expect quality photos” is something our team and Victoria founds very inappropriate and something that has nothing to do with the tour you participated. Your tour that night had ended 1:30 in Beyond Arctic office and before that we chased down the clear skies for you and you got collection of edited photos sent to you from the tour. You had ordered extra service from us to drop you back to Apukka resort AFTER THE TOUR. It was pure matter of luck, that Victoria even had her camera in the car when dropping you out to your accommodation and now you are giving her 2 star review because of this fully extra photography service we provided you free of charge? We find your behaviour absolutely disrespectful. The fact is that Victoria was so kind that she took the camera out in Apukka resort and even took a few pictures of you on HER OWN FREE TIME AFTER THE TOUR even though she should have been already driving back to office. This is the thanks you are giving to her? Let me point out a few things we have to ensure when working as a professional photography agency: 1. We never send all the photos to our guests from the tour. We are professional photography agency, and we also make sure that this is seen in the photos we deliver to you. We are not one of those regular every night aurora tours from which you will be dumped with pile of UNEDITED photos containing huge amount of shaken and inaccurate photos. We actually take pride of the photos we deliver to you, and you can see it in quality. 2. The first set of photos Victoria took from you in Apukka were test photos to get focus and exposure right in the camera – We don’t send this kind of test photos. Then we took photos of you and there were some photos that were shaken, because you moved too much during the long exposure – We don’t send this kind of shaken photos. Finally, you got all together 4 photos sent to you from the DROP OFF service, from which you should get NO PHOTOS AT ALL and there should not even be camera in the car. Victoria took these extra photos for you to make your experience even better. Now it seems she definitely should have not done anything extra, if this is your way to thank her of this extra, she provided to you. So after all these photos we provided to you outside of the tour hours, free of charge, you think that whole tour is now dropped from 5 stars to 2 stars? This makes absolutely no sense. After chasing Northern Lights to you, after getting photos taken on the tour and even providing extra photos from the service that has nothing to do with our Northern Lights tour and is done with Victoria’s own time? We find your review and comments lack of respect towards Victoria on a fully cloudy night she still was able to find Northern Lights for you. Your Aurora chasing team was one those few who actually got to see the Northern Lights in Rovaniemi region that night, thanks to Victoria’s commitment to do the extra mile and chase down the clear skies. We have already reported this to TripAdvisor, as your photo comments and review has nothing to do with the actual tour you have taken part and rated here and is against the rules.