This is from Yankee Boy Basin in SW Colorado, just outside of Ouray. A really awesome drive to get up there, for probably a 100 years the drive involved a narrow ledge and driving a part where the shelf above the road extended over it like a 1/2 tunnel. It could get the hair to stand up on the back of your neck, especially as much of that section only was wide enough for one car. I got news that they have knocked off that overhang and widened the road recently, so that will make for quite the different feel in a ride this year.
As to these images, this is from last August. I am slowly going back through images I missed processing from last year, though I am still having to skip over some, but at least I am getting to a few more.
This is an image where the moon had risen later in the night and was really lighting up the ground. But as a result, it was also washing out the colors and richness of the Milky Way. The Milky Way was still there but pretty washed out. I processed the single image as you will see in #1, as a single image. And I liked it. Yeah, the MW doesn't totally pop off the screen, but it's there and it's realistic to what I captured and saw.
After I was done, for some reason some recent images I have seen over at NightScapers on FaceBook came to mind. While many people still are posting Milky Way images that are more or less single images with the ground lit up with Low Level Lighting, there is an increasing number that are enhancing their Milky Way images by capturing the Milky Way at a different time, and almost always taking multiple images of the Milky Way using a tracker and then stacking those to bring out more details in the night sky. But by the time that's all done, the photo they post no longer represents where the Milky Way was actually located in the night sky. I would hope most would try to make it close to where it would have been, but it's also very easy to take liberties in where the Milky Way is now placed in respect to the ground layer.
A 2nd thing I have been seeing online (and not just at NightScapers, but also Milky Way Chasers) is the use of a wider lens for the ground, and a tighter lens for the Milky Way. A recent case I saw used a 14mm for the ground, and a 20mm for the Milky Way. What that will do is make the Milky Way much larger in comparison to the ground that it actually was in reality. This really borders on being fake photography now in my thinking.
The point with both of these is to make the photos more impressive then other peoples photos. And where do we draw the line?
With my #2 image, I decided to imitate the chose of using a tighter focal length lens for the Milky Way, and also use an image that was shot earlier in the evening so it wasn't washed out. The Milky Way in this one was positioned to the left of the view that you see when I captured it, and also 3 or 4 hours earlier. When I composited it into the ground layer, I used the Warp Tool to increase the scale of the Milky Way (trying to simulate a 20mm lens, though I don't think I increased it that much, but it is larger then what I captured.
I will have to admit, I think #2 looks way better since the Milky Way wasn't washed out. But it doesn't set right with me since it wasn't real. Now, I could have chosen a different night to capture the Milky Way there, and thus having the Milky Way positioned naturally over the waterfall on a night it isn't getting washed out by the moon. Though, in that case I am still not getting the detail I am getting in the ground layer and Milky Way without shooting the ground later or longer as no matter how great our tools are to process images, totally black images that are all in shadow are still even after being brightened and polished never going to look as good as a ground layer that has more light on the scene from either the moon or captured closer to when the sun is setting or rising. I am not sure on a scene like this how well Low Level Lighting could be used either. It's a pretty wide scene with some distant objects in it.
All thoughts are welcome,
Jim
#1 - Original single shot that is lit up by the moon
#2 - Processed with an earlier Milky Way composited in
As to these images, this is from last August. I am slowly going back through images I missed processing from last year, though I am still having to skip over some, but at least I am getting to a few more.
This is an image where the moon had risen later in the night and was really lighting up the ground. But as a result, it was also washing out the colors and richness of the Milky Way. The Milky Way was still there but pretty washed out. I processed the single image as you will see in #1, as a single image. And I liked it. Yeah, the MW doesn't totally pop off the screen, but it's there and it's realistic to what I captured and saw.
After I was done, for some reason some recent images I have seen over at NightScapers on FaceBook came to mind. While many people still are posting Milky Way images that are more or less single images with the ground lit up with Low Level Lighting, there is an increasing number that are enhancing their Milky Way images by capturing the Milky Way at a different time, and almost always taking multiple images of the Milky Way using a tracker and then stacking those to bring out more details in the night sky. But by the time that's all done, the photo they post no longer represents where the Milky Way was actually located in the night sky. I would hope most would try to make it close to where it would have been, but it's also very easy to take liberties in where the Milky Way is now placed in respect to the ground layer.
A 2nd thing I have been seeing online (and not just at NightScapers, but also Milky Way Chasers) is the use of a wider lens for the ground, and a tighter lens for the Milky Way. A recent case I saw used a 14mm for the ground, and a 20mm for the Milky Way. What that will do is make the Milky Way much larger in comparison to the ground that it actually was in reality. This really borders on being fake photography now in my thinking.
The point with both of these is to make the photos more impressive then other peoples photos. And where do we draw the line?
With my #2 image, I decided to imitate the chose of using a tighter focal length lens for the Milky Way, and also use an image that was shot earlier in the evening so it wasn't washed out. The Milky Way in this one was positioned to the left of the view that you see when I captured it, and also 3 or 4 hours earlier. When I composited it into the ground layer, I used the Warp Tool to increase the scale of the Milky Way (trying to simulate a 20mm lens, though I don't think I increased it that much, but it is larger then what I captured.
I will have to admit, I think #2 looks way better since the Milky Way wasn't washed out. But it doesn't set right with me since it wasn't real. Now, I could have chosen a different night to capture the Milky Way there, and thus having the Milky Way positioned naturally over the waterfall on a night it isn't getting washed out by the moon. Though, in that case I am still not getting the detail I am getting in the ground layer and Milky Way without shooting the ground later or longer as no matter how great our tools are to process images, totally black images that are all in shadow are still even after being brightened and polished never going to look as good as a ground layer that has more light on the scene from either the moon or captured closer to when the sun is setting or rising. I am not sure on a scene like this how well Low Level Lighting could be used either. It's a pretty wide scene with some distant objects in it.
All thoughts are welcome,
Jim
#1 - Original single shot that is lit up by the moon
#2 - Processed with an earlier Milky Way composited in
