Critique Style Requested: In-depth
The photographer has shared comprehensive information about their intent and creative vision for this image. Please examine the details and offer feedback on how they can most effectively realize their vision.
Self Critique
The August Milky Way to fairly vertical. I think it works better with a vertical orientation. I have always wanted to get flowers in the foreground of the Milky Way so when I saw this tree and the flowers in the daylight, and a good south facing orientation, I knew this is where I’d come back that night. I love the tree, I don’t love the blurry foreground flowers, but some of that is wind. I’ve yet to learn how to composite a longer exposure or blue hour foreground in there. That would probably help, but I do like to be able to say it was all captured at the same time! There was a lot of airglow which can be hard to make look dark enough, but I do like the cooler tint I gave the sky. In hindsight, I wish I’d payed a bit more attention to the very front flowers, but I couldnt really crop them out because I have this thing for included the Rho Ophiuchi complex in my Milky Ways so croppiong wasnt really an option and moving to the left put me uncomfortably close to a patch of bushes that I just knew was hiding a Grizzly Bear!
Creative direction
My approach is was to give a bit of a timeless look to the image. Old trees evoke deep thought, as does the Milky Way. The flowers add a bit of a younger contrast but nicely complement the yellows in the core.
Specific Feedback
I am open to all feedback from emotional impact to technical advice. I like the image a lot as-is, but I like to hear how it impacts others.
Technical Details
Nikon D850
Sigma Art 20mm 1.4
ISO 4000, f/2, 13 seconds
This is ten light and thirty dark images stacked for noise reduction
Its been run through the Ministars action in Photoshop
I used Topaz Denoise and Sharpen to help out just the foreground
Everything else is done in Lightroom, including sharpening and adding texture to the tree, lightening the shadows, adding clarity and contrast to the sky.
Description
Dunraven Pass is a specular wildflower garden in the summer. An incredible variety of flowers populate the steep hillsides on the slopes of Mount Washburn. It is a big area within the northern range of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is the anchor of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a huge area of interconnected wild spaces that spans several states. It would take more than one lifetime to fully comprehend the importance of this spectacular sanctuary. Going out even farther, the north western corner of the United States is full of stunning natural areas ranging from semi-arid plains to heavily glaciated towering peaks.
You can keep going like this until you’ve covered the globe, jumping from one unbelievable area to the next. Then, you look up. You look up at night in an area like Yellowstone which is as free from human interference with the darkness as is possible. Here the stars reach out, put there hands around head like a loving grandma, kiss you on the forehead and pull your attention right into their embrace. It is unfathomable, really, that you can see things that are so far away. Incomprehensible distances, uncountable stars, unimaginable planets, and fantastical clouds of gas and dust are all elements in the indescribable beauty of the night sky. Yellowstone is huge and stunning in its natural beauty, but its all relative when you consider the planet which contains it, the galaxy in which the planet resides, and the universe which holds it all.
