Just Before the Moon Rise

[JimFox]

I captured this a week ago up in the Rocky Mountain National Park. I was up there for the night with my 8 year old grandson Caleb. He wanted to see the Milky Way.

The timing of this image is really a week earlier than I prefer, as the moon rises into the Milky Way and it does it really early, so there isn't much of a dark sky for long. But I am oh so glad I did it, but within about a 1000 mile radius of Northern Colorado there has not been any clear skies since, and that will continue for another week. So I am so glad I captured this when I did, even under less than ideal conditions.

Nikon Z8
10mm Zero-D Laowa f2.8

ISO 4000
25 secs
f2.8

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Great skies for this view. Quite different from most of the west right now.

We finally got a few days without smoke but its coming back tomorrow.

 

[JimFox]

Great skies for this view. Quite different from most of the west right now.

We finally got a few days without smoke but its coming back tomorrow.

Thanks Alan. I was going to go up to Montana a few days ago to catch the Milky Way and the Perseids Meteor Shower, but the wind shifted and the smoke turned the visibility to almost nothing. I had a friend up there, and he said he could only see 4 stars. So yeah, the smoke is a real issue.

 

[John Holbrook]

One word…Wow!

 

[Kyle Jones]

A few thoughts:
1) I'm going to have to spend more time using that lens for MW shots
2) I'm glad you made the effort - beautiful scene with the mountains. Yeah, the coming moonrise does tend to prevent getting some of the more dramatic MW colors in the core, but more and more that isn't something I worry about.
3) Is this a single image? That purplish mountain on the left looks like somethingI often run into when either blending or double processing. The brightness just looks off compared to the rest of the image. I'm guessing the moon is coming up behind it creating part of the challenge.

 

[JimFox]

One word…Wow!

Thanks so much John!

 

[JimFox]

A few thoughts:
1) I'm going to have to spend more time using that lens for MW shots
2) I'm glad you made the effort - beautiful scene with the mountains. Yeah, the coming moonrise does tend to prevent getting some of the more dramatic MW colors in the core, but more and more that isn't something I worry about.
3) Is this a single image? That purplish mountain on the left looks like somethingI often run into when either blending or double processing. The brightness just looks off compared to the rest of the image. I'm guessing the moon is coming up behind it creating part of the challenge.

Thanks so much Kyle.

Yeah, that lens isn't perfect, it's a bit of a pain to shoot at f2.8 when one gets used to f1.8 at night. But the images clean up pretty nice and wow, I love that 10mm view sometimes.

The ground layer is a blend from the early morning. I did play with that tone, it was much more blue to start. The smaller peak ridges on the right side were that same bright blue, so those I just desaturated and darkened. But on the left I did tone it down, and changed the cast from blue to a more purple cast as the light pollution on the left and it's glow, that coloring seemed to feel right. When I totally removed the color cast there, it felt odd, like the glow from the light pollution wasn't radiating light.

Perhaps it's one of those things I should revisit. I have noticed that sometimes when editing, since our brain is used to the really bright blue, that to totally eliminate it then seems odd to our brains, but if we or I go back a second time, we can make a 2nd reduction in saturation/brightness that now doesn't feel as drastic to our brains.