Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction
Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
What do you feel when you first see this image?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
"The Behunin family was one the the earliest to settle in the wild beauty of Capitol Reef, Utah. Their cabin built in 1882, housed a family of 15. Repeated flooding forced them to leave for higher ground in a year. The abandoned cabin is the silent witness of what was. dreamed of…
Technical Details
Canon R6 (astromodified ) & Sigma 28 mm f1.4
Vertical panorama, Stacked , Long Exposure FG blend
Sky: X 20 at f1.8 ISO 8000 8s blended with x 5 same EXIF with Lee 5 soft filter
FG: f4.5 ISO 2500, 480 s
Specific Feedback
Aesthetic, Conceptual , Emotional
Critique Template
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- Vision and Purpose:
- Conceptual:
- Emotional Impact and Mood:
- Composition:
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- Technical:
My first thought was that I love any Milky Way image where you can clearly see the yellow of Antares and the Blue of Rho Ophiuci! I really like this warm processing style. Nice composition in how you used the landform to align with the Core. Beautiful work.
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A very interesting location! You had wonderfully clear air to be able to resolve the Rho region so well! For my taste (and it’s purely personal taste) I’m a little bothered by the warm tones. You have a very nice lens for minimal star distortion and it looks like you did a careful job, technically. Was the stacking in SLS or Sequator? I’ve never used a soft filter for starscapes – I’m curious what it contributed?
My first impression is that the hillside on the left is a bit too prominent-- it feels like it is crowding the MW – but again just my take. I wonder about moving a little to the right, although I’d hate to lose the 3/4 view of the cabin.
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My first impression is being overwhelmed by the milky way itself
It seems the land area is illuminated by the stars as I can see few shadows - implying a long exposure. The milky way is very bright and drowns out most of the other stars which I find a bit odd. I do like the way the milky way runs parallel to the hill on the lhs
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Thank you for your feedback… I do prefer warmer tones.
Thank you for your feedback.
The foreground was a long exposure of seven minutes.. I have used a star reduction technique with a plug in “ Star exterminator. “ The goal of this is to give prominence to the Milky Way band and surrounding nebulosity by lowering the intensity of the other stars.
It is commonly used, though I appreciate that look is not for everyone’s taste.
Thank you so much for your feedback!
I do prefer warmer tones in my Milky Way.
I did the stacking in SLS
The fog filter allows the brighter stars to be enhanced; I did this for the stars around Rho to be more visible in the composition above the cabin.
I hear you about the prominence of the mountain on the left.
Thank you again
The use of the fog filter is well done here, as far as I can see at the size posted. I have seen it produce garish and unnatural results in other posts. Reducing the smaller stars and emphasizing the larger ones is a worthy goal, and difficult to achieve with our normal cameras and lenses – mostly due to the lenses, I suspect. A modern “astro” camera and a good telescope (refractor or reflector) will render stars in a realistic range of sizes and colors, with pleasing softness. But astro equipment has the limitation of being narrow-field. Even a moderately “wide” view, that would be equivalent to something like a 50-100 mm lens, is composed by a mosaic of many narrow-field subframes and requires a heroic effort.
The NR issue is solved very nicely by stacking (much better than any of the NR filters we have now) and by a separate exposure for the FG, as done here. The problem of imperfect stars from our lenses can be somewhat mitigated by reducing the smaller ones and softening the larger ones. An additional step is to use a “process” (BlurXTerminator) in the astro processing software PixInsight, which can correct star artifacts to an astonishing extent.
But for the tools most of us have available, you have done a very nice job here. I look forward to seeing more of your work and your comments on others’ work.
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As always, I appreciate your feedback!
One of my goals is to get familiar with Pixinsight … that will be a while though.
It’s a bit later, but I should make a correction. The filter I have felt did harm to MW images wasn’t yours, but one of possibly several “star enhancement” type filters. I applaud your use of the Lee Soft 5. Although I rely on PI for improving stars, I think the Lee is worth looking into.
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Thanks, Diane for the update.
I appreciate your thoughtful input!
