Moonlight at Artist's Point

[Kyle Jones]

After shooting sunset at Glacier Point, we headed back toward the valley and parked near Bridalveil Falls for the hike up to Artist's Point. I picked this spot for my night shots because it has an open view and is less affected by lights than Tunnel View. Plus we had it to ourselves.

The ground is a 4 minute exposure at ISO 1600. The sky was shot at ISO 8000 for 20s. I stacked 5 sky images for noise reduction. Any thoughts are welcome.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is a great example of a night shot without light painting. What was teh light source for the ground? Looks like maybe a partial moon.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the result of your efforts here. When you stack sky shots like this does photoshop's auto-align handle things correctly or is there more involved with the task?

 

[Kyle Jones]

This is a great example of a night shot without light painting. What was teh light source for the ground? Looks like maybe a partial moon.

Thanks Ben - you are correct that this is a partial moon. It was at about 18% which seemed to work nicely. Since the moon was setting, I also had options to shoot the sky without any ground illumination if I wanted extra darkness.

I like the result of your efforts here. When you stack sky shots like this does photoshop's auto-align handle things correctly or is there more involved with the task?

I use auto-align and it generally works well. Since the stars move at different speeds (depending on how far they are from a pole), they don't line up perfectly and you can see some streaking after the alignment. Blending with the ground is always a little challenging since that alignment is harder for Photoshop to handle and the brightness of the ground and sky don't match perfectly. I did burn some areas of the ground to have them not stand out too much against the sky.

 

[JimFox]

After shooting sunset at Glacier Point, we headed back toward the valley and parked near Bridalveil Falls for the hike up to Artist's Point. I picked this spot for my night shots because it has an open view and is less affected by lights than Tunnel View. Plus we had it to ourselves.

The ground is a 4 minute exposure at ISO 1600. The sky was shot at ISO 8000 for 20s. I stacked 5 sky images for noise reduction. Any thoughts are welcome.
View attachment 8720

Oh man, my relapse has been triggered again! I will have to head to Urgent Care if you keep posting these awesome photos of what I missed.

Great job on the timing, it looks very natural.

 

[JimFox]

I like the result of your efforts here. When you stack sky shots like this does photoshop's auto-align handle things correctly or is there more involved with the task?

Hey Alan, we have a Tutorial written by Kyle on how to stack and reduce noise in the night sky.

http://www.focalworld.com/index.php?articles/night-time-noise-reduction.26/

 

[Ryan10]

I love the image. Nice to change it up without a MW core sometimes.

On a side note, a person just died falling off of Half Dome.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Most excellent!

 

[Dean]

Kyle,
Beautiful image ..just the perfect amount of light to maintain the real feel of a night shot.
Really excellent job on this one.
Regards,
Dean

 

[Joe Colozzo]

beautiful and peacefull ! great capture !

 

[Timmeh]

Hey Kyle,

I like the higher cleaner perspective without the foreground trees, and the processing is nice and clean. I'm not sure what I'd do with those smudges of cloud on the left and right. They prove a little bit distracting.

 

[Mike Mancil]

Wow, spectacular!

 

[Darcy Grizzle]

I love this!

 

[dan swiger]

After shooting sunset at Glacier Point, we headed back toward the valley and parked near Bridalveil Falls for the hike up to Artist's Point. I picked this spot for my night shots because it has an open view and is less affected by lights than Tunnel View. Plus we had it to ourselves.

The ground is a 4 minute exposure at ISO 1600. The sky was shot at ISO 8000 for 20s. I stacked 5 sky images for noise reduction. Any thoughts are welcome.
View attachment 8720

Kyle, as others have noted, this is a nice change to the usual, milky way or light paint.
The use of blends with natural light really makes this appealing

Dan

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I like the natural setting much better than light painting. Excellent image, Kyle.