So on the 21st I went out and met Alisa at Abbot Church out in Eastern Colorado. There was about 10 other fun loving photographers there and it made for a fun time.
I set up 2 camera's, 1 with a long lens and one with a wider lens to shoot the church with the Christmas star conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. While my long lens ended up being a bust, everything I shot turned out fuzzy. I am not totally sure why, but I was thankful I had gotten nice close up results on Sunday night. The wide shots turned out really nice I thought, that is until I started processing them. There was no clouds in the sky at all, just a blue sky with a golden horizon. As I started processing I notice some banding in the sky. I struggled for hours today as I mixed processing and babysitting grandkids. Perhaps not the best combination, but that's what I had to do. After maybe 4 or 5 hours on the sky and getting no where with trying the normal autofill, patching, gausian blur, etc. It hit me that maybe I should try the Photoshop Sky replacement. After all, it was just a totally blue sky anyway, it wasn't like I was replacing a blue sky with a nuclear sunset.
So the star was where it was, and the meteor was there where it was, so I simply masked those back in. I am not sure about the Meteor, I didn't even notice it at first. It wasn't till I was zoomed in and scrolling looking for dust bunnies that I saw it. So perhaps it's a distraction. I did also get the position of the conjunction in 2 dozen different spots, this positioning was the one I liked best. But I had gotten it from higher up and to the left to directly over the cross, in the cross itself, then in the bell tower, etc.. So I have a lot of options to go back to later if I wanted to.
Anyway.... all comments are welcome.
Jim
PS. one of the guys there had gone inside the church and set up some low level lighting which was really nice and added a great touch.
I set up 2 camera's, 1 with a long lens and one with a wider lens to shoot the church with the Christmas star conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. While my long lens ended up being a bust, everything I shot turned out fuzzy. I am not totally sure why, but I was thankful I had gotten nice close up results on Sunday night. The wide shots turned out really nice I thought, that is until I started processing them. There was no clouds in the sky at all, just a blue sky with a golden horizon. As I started processing I notice some banding in the sky. I struggled for hours today as I mixed processing and babysitting grandkids. Perhaps not the best combination, but that's what I had to do. After maybe 4 or 5 hours on the sky and getting no where with trying the normal autofill, patching, gausian blur, etc. It hit me that maybe I should try the Photoshop Sky replacement. After all, it was just a totally blue sky anyway, it wasn't like I was replacing a blue sky with a nuclear sunset.
So the star was where it was, and the meteor was there where it was, so I simply masked those back in. I am not sure about the Meteor, I didn't even notice it at first. It wasn't till I was zoomed in and scrolling looking for dust bunnies that I saw it. So perhaps it's a distraction. I did also get the position of the conjunction in 2 dozen different spots, this positioning was the one I liked best. But I had gotten it from higher up and to the left to directly over the cross, in the cross itself, then in the bell tower, etc.. So I have a lot of options to go back to later if I wanted to.
Anyway.... all comments are welcome.
Jim
PS. one of the guys there had gone inside the church and set up some low level lighting which was really nice and added a great touch.
it was beautiful to watch!!