Death Valley Aurora Version 2.2
Original
Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
We started the first night of our night photography workshop by going to an area a couple of miles east of Stovepipe Wells to capture a large area of mud cracks with the Moon and Venus setting while waiting for the Milky Way to begin its rise. After a couple of shots I turned around and was stunned to see what I thought was the Aurora lighting up the northern sky. Our instructor confirmed the sighting and everyone immediately pivoted to capture a most unusual sighting. While there had been predictions that the Aurora “might” be visible in Wyoming and Montana there was certainly no expectation of it being visible as far south as Death Valley. It was a really unusual and exciting experience for all of us. Serendipity!!!
Specific Feedback
This was a single exposure so some LightRoom work was necessary since I exposed for the Aurora and the foreground was so dark that little detail was evident. Having seen the actual foreground and its interesting detail I felt it important that it be appropriately exposed to give the image depth and establish an anchoring location. I would be most interested in feedback as to the degree I accomplished that as well as any other suggestions for improvement. Also, a couple of aircraft trails were removed from the sky.
Technical Details
Camera - Nikon D810
Lens - Nikkor 14-24 f2.8
Aperture - f2.8
Focal Length - 14 mm
Exposure - 16 seconds
ISO - 1000
Post processing done in LR using David Kingham’s night image processing methodologystrong text
1 Like
What an incredible moment! Pretty rare to see it that far south. Have you ever tried Topaz sharpen? It works wonders on foregrounds in night shots. You can set up a mask so it just does the foreground. I like the way it sharpens and reduces noise. Your mask on the foreground could use a little refining where it meets the more distant mountains. Thats pretty easy to fix by using a brush in the “subtract” function of the mask (if you used Lightroom). I do love the image though and the composition is about as good as you could do from that vantage point.
Amazing!! A wonderful and rare opportunity, well captured and presented! The aurora and sky are dramatic and the FG interesting. The stars are sharp – a tribute to the lens.
I think you have some leeway to tweak the processing a bit – although I don’t know what the raw file looked like and I don’t know David’s techniques. If you would like to post the initial appearance of the raw and your steps, it could be a good discussion.
First impressions are that the upper corners are lighter than toward the center, which is the opposite of expectations – there is always some vignetting with wide-angle lenses. And it looks like the mask you used to lighten the FG had a soft edge that didn’t reach the horizon. I wouldn’t expect a completely hard edge but it feels that some refinement could be done.
Looking forward to a conversation on this, if you are inclined! I also hope to see some other things you captured there!
Hey Doug, so glad this turned out well, such an incredible night we had! There’s a couple of things bothering my eye, one is the transition from sky to ground. There are some obvious halos of darkness in the mounds, and lighter halos in the sky. With a little more feathering you can bring these together more naturally. Also, the foreground feels a bit too bright for my taste, I would dial that back a little to make it fell more like it was taken at night, this will help the blend look more natural as well. Looking forward to seeing the final print!
Thanks to all for your observations and suggestions. My apologies for not being very prompt in responding to you but you’re sharing time with fly-fishing now. The trout in the North Georgia mountains have a very high priority this time of year (North Carolina and Tennessee, too).
I am starting from scratch with your suggestions and observations in mind. I’d really like to make this a “wall hanger” . Version 2 should appear here in the next day. Thank you for your interest and patience.
Doug
In response to suggestions, I decided to start from ground zero in re-processing the image and hope I’ve gotten closer to what the suggestions (all good ones) would produce. In addition, I tweaked the WB a bit by lowering the temperature -20, increased the tint +12 and slightly lowered the exposure -10. I then used Topaz DeNoise AI low light setting to tame the foreground noise. Because, in reality, the sky had a blue look (the moon was still present) I applied one of David Kingham’s presets (“Pre-set 4.1 Bring Back the Blue”). The free pre-sets can be found at Exploringexposure.com (“Learning”) section. The final step was to increase the file size by 200% and go hunting for hot pixels and noise that was missed by Topaz DeNoise.
I am quite sure someone more experienced and skilled at post-processing would do an even better job on any of my images but this is as close to actual reality as I remember a remarkable night. Additional comments/critique are certainly welcomed.
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So much better!! I’m sure it was a challenging file and I think you did an excellent job!
Looks great Doug! Love the new version. I’m glad you took the time to rework the image. I tend to do that to my own stuff several times over as I learn new techniques.
Thanks to all for the suggestions - educational, fun and productive.
