"Gratuitous Light"

Image Critiques Nightscape & Astro Critiques
1

Letchworth State Park, NY Blended-Edit.jpg
Letchworth State Park, NY Blended-Edit.jpg3391Ă—5086 2.65 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

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

Description

On Sept 12, we took a quick drive across the border to Letchworth State Park, NY. The apps said we had a brief break in the clouds from 9-10 pm. Just what we needed for this composition with full dark at 9:06pm and the 70% moon was rising just before 10pm. Despite being Bortle 4 and the light bloom from Portage nearby, I loved the FG possible here.
I personally do not like to light paint my astro landscape images; I do work with moon light for my FG. Another group arrived just before 10pm, so no moonlight for me … sigh. They graciously agreed to give us 3 mins with no lights on, for a longer exposure FG. Grateful!
A car passed shedding light on the right side of the bridge; then a train appeared that slowly drove over the trestle during the long exposure. Artificial light here, unintended, but I like the train light trail and I hope the other light may have helped the image.

Specific Feedback

  1. Appreciate feed back on the composition; I thought the FG image was “left heavy”. I could not move as we were in “tripod gridlock”. I hoped the gift of the car lights on the bridge on the right might help balance that…thoughts?
  2. Used luminosity masks to create the mask to blend the images- still had some trouble with the finer wires under the bridge. Any ideas?
  3. Any other feedback?
    TIA

Technical Details

EXIF: Canon R6 astromod and Sigma 28mm f1.4
Sky stacked images x 30 - f 1.8 ISO 5000 8s Stacked in StarryLandscape Stacker.
FG f5 ISO 2000 130 s Blended in the exposure with car light on bridge.
Developed in LR & PS

Critique Template

Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.

Vision and Purpose:
Conceptual:
Emotional Impact and Mood:
Composition:
Balance and Visual Weight:
Depth and Dimension:
Color:
Lighting:
Processing:
Technical:

2

Wonderful!! I think you are right that the light on the right balances the visual weight of the left side, and it definitely adds interest. It feels like a good gift, and is appropriately subdued. Moonlight or no, the ambient light on the FG is lovely, and the masked blend looks flawless.

And it’s so nice to see the enlarged version. The star shapes are excellent! And I’m impressed that SLS can handle the star movement over 4 minutes of frames. The wires did reveal a limitation. You could be forgiven for cloning out the remaining ones, but it is an interesting challenge to try to recover them. Since that area has less sky detail, I wonder if they can be salvaged from the raw frame used to align the stack? But you have probably tried that.

1 Like
3

Thank you so much for the feedback- so appreciated.
I will try your idea about aligning the stack for sure. Then as my last resort, I’ll try cloning out the wires.

4

Theresa,

Excellent work.

1 Like
5

Thank you so much, Youssef.

6

That’s wonderful Theresa! It sounds like really challenging conditions, but everything came together really well. I do think the artificial lights really added hear, they add a unique effect.

1 Like
7

Thank you for your thoughts on this- appreciated!