Good Medicine

Image Critiques
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1

Good Medicine-3.jpg
Good Medicine-3.jpg2048×1174 1.33 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

November 11, 2025

This place has an inexorable pull on me. My camera and I often find ourselves somewhere near here when the need to get out and capture some beauty arises. Sunrises and sunsets are tough to beat here. In late Winter, the Milky Way crowns the Bridgers in a most deserving way. I see Elk, Deer and even Owls of various species here. In the late Spring, it’s a great spot to find Pasque Flowers, one of my favorites. One morning when it was -30º I fount field of hoar frost sparkling in the morning sunlight.

This place has an inexorable pull on me. Sunrises and sunsets are tough to beat here. In late Winter, the Milky Way crowns the Bridgers in a most deserving way. I see Elk, Deer and even Owls of various species here. I almost always hear Coyotes at this location. In the late Spring, it’s a great spot to find Pasque Flowers, one of my favorites. It is also my favorite place to photograph the Aurora. Nothing beats brilliant curtains of light over Bozeman’s Bridger Mountains. Time spent here is good medicine.

Specific Feedback

When shooting the Aurora, it helps to use a relatively short exposure to maintain some structure to the curtains and pillars of light. This creates a surprising amount of noise, even in the lighter areas of the sky. I’ve removed most of it with Lightroom and Topaz. Do you find it distracting at all? Not sure how it would show up in print.

Technical Details

Nikon D850
Sigma Art 14-24mm 2.8
ISO 2500, F/2.8, 2 seconds, 14mm
8 vertical image pano, stitched in PTGui. Processed primarily in Lightroom. I used Photoshop for the Liquify Filter to fix lens distortion on the ends. Noise reduction in Topaz and Lightroom.

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2

Wow! Amazing and other-worldly. I might join the coyotes howling at this sky! So many ways to look at it. The green part of the aurora and the clouds create a large mountain, with green snowfields and a pink sunset. I’m a bit distracted by the grassland foreground, which seems too large in the frame, making the actual mountains quite small in the distance. I might experiment with a crop in from the left to the edge of the first vertical pink ray to focus in a bit more and possibly even center the cloud mountain in the frame. Definitely good medicine!

3

That’s a good point about the grass overpowering the mountains. That’s the side effect of 14mm and a foreground that slopes up. I could have tried a multi row pano with a longer focal length, but I probably would have lost some details in the rays of light.

1 Like
4

Yes to too much grass, I would crop half of it off and make it into a pano shot. Other than that, I love it the way it is, with the stars as icing on the aurora! Never mind the noise, you’ll never see it on print as long as you don’t exaggerate the size of the print. Beautiful!
Grt, Ingrid.

5

I just now saw this!! No idea how I missed it except with all the holiday busy-ness. I think it is gorgeous and find nothing to suggest for any improvement. For me, the FG grass sets a stage to show immensity and I feel as though I am kneeling right there is the grass. The smallness of the mountains makes the sky feel immense and even the clouds are overpowered by the aurora. The dome shape of the clouds mirrors the shape of the aurora. The horizon is flat but the sky is a dome – I love that!! I would not crop at all, but there is an option for a twofer. Excellent pano processing!!