What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Hello, this is my first image to post to NPN. This is a composite photo of the Matterhorn from September. One exposure is for the sky and pond (ISO 6400, 10 seconds, f/2.8), one for the ground (ISO 1600, 300 seconds, f/4.5) I’m looking for some feedback on post-processing techniques, especially color and white balance. What would you do differently to improve the look of this? Thanks.
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Damon, This is a wonderful Milky Way night image. I like the color and white balance just as it is. Your shooting this as two separate images that are combined worked really well. I appreciate your noting the exif data. Unfortunately, I am not close enough to sky that is not light polluted to practice Milky Way images. I might crop just a snitch from the foreground to emphasize the sky more. To me there are no nits here. The snow melt on the mountain is certainly evidence of global warming. Thanks for posting this great shot.
Wow Damon! I saw this…and wondered if someone from our tour posted this. You did what I believe is a wonderful job handling this image. And, of course, I know exactly where the spot is. What I don’t remember, is your walking down the mountain in the dark to get the shot. VERY NICE JOB!!!
I quite like this and I think you did an excellent job with it. I Can’t think of anything at all that I would change…
Welcome Damon! Keep these coming; this is excellent.
It’s tough to keep the mood of a Milky Way foreground; you need detail without it looking unnatural. I think this is a great job of that compromise. My preference is a cooler color balance for night skies, but that is a personal preference. Warmer colors (brownish) are actually more realistic though. I do think careful noise reduction would improve the image.
Welcome to NPN Damon, and thank you for sharing this wonderful nightscape image with us. The sky looks great, and I like the colors you have in the sky. I also love the composition, this image is very well put together, with lots interesting element across the entire scene, I especially like the ridge on the left.
One thing puzzles me slightly, you said that the sky and the pond come from the same bracket, but to my eye the pond looks noisier than the sky, and I guess that I might have expected them to look more similar. not sure whats causing that? The sky looks great, the pond looks noisy.
Thanks for the feedback Ed. One challenge that I had was that the exposure of the reflection in the pond was darker than the sky. I’m guessing why there appears to be more noise in the pond is because I increased the exposure to reveal more reflection of the stars. However, with that comes more revealing of noise. The pond was also initially grayer than the sky. I guess there is debate on which is more natural. Technically, the grayer and darker color was more natural but at the same time it looks strange for it to look a different color than the sky. In the end, I added some blue to the pond to try to match the sky.
Thanks guys for the feedback. I could run the image through a program like Nik Define or Topaz Denoise to reduce some noise. Although, I hear it is better to do earlier in your image workflow rather than the final step. White balance of the sky is always tricky depending on taste and what the conditions give you. Some like the blueish color, some like the blacker/grayer look. I’m still trying to find my look for what I want the sky to look like.
