Its All Relative

Critique Style Requested: In-depth

The photographer has shared comprehensive information about their intent and creative vision for this image. Please examine the details and offer feedback on how they can most effectively realize their vision.

Self Critique

The August Milky Way to fairly vertical. I think it works better with a vertical orientation. I have always wanted to get flowers in the foreground of the Milky Way so when I saw this tree and the flowers in the daylight, and a good south facing orientation, I knew this is where I’d come back that night. I love the tree, I don’t love the blurry foreground flowers, but some of that is wind. I’ve yet to learn how to composite a longer exposure or blue hour foreground in there. That would probably help, but I do like to be able to say it was all captured at the same time! There was a lot of airglow which can be hard to make look dark enough, but I do like the cooler tint I gave the sky. In hindsight, I wish I’d payed a bit more attention to the very front flowers, but I couldnt really crop them out because I have this thing for included the Rho Ophiuchi complex in my Milky Ways so croppiong wasnt really an option and moving to the left put me uncomfortably close to a patch of bushes that I just knew was hiding a Grizzly Bear!

Creative direction

My approach is was to give a bit of a timeless look to the image. Old trees evoke deep thought, as does the Milky Way. The flowers add a bit of a younger contrast but nicely complement the yellows in the core.

Specific Feedback

I am open to all feedback from emotional impact to technical advice. I like the image a lot as-is, but I like to hear how it impacts others.

Technical Details

Nikon D850
Sigma Art 20mm 1.4
ISO 4000, f/2, 13 seconds

This is ten light and thirty dark images stacked for noise reduction
Its been run through the Ministars action in Photoshop
I used Topaz Denoise and Sharpen to help out just the foreground
Everything else is done in Lightroom, including sharpening and adding texture to the tree, lightening the shadows, adding clarity and contrast to the sky.

Description

Dunraven Pass is a specular wildflower garden in the summer. An incredible variety of flowers populate the steep hillsides on the slopes of Mount Washburn. It is a big area within the northern range of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is the anchor of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a huge area of interconnected wild spaces that spans several states. It would take more than one lifetime to fully comprehend the importance of this spectacular sanctuary. Going out even farther, the north western corner of the United States is full of stunning natural areas ranging from semi-arid plains to heavily glaciated towering peaks.

You can keep going like this until you’ve covered the globe, jumping from one unbelievable area to the next. Then, you look up. You look up at night in an area like Yellowstone which is as free from human interference with the darkness as is possible. Here the stars reach out, put there hands around head like a loving grandma, kiss you on the forehead and pull your attention right into their embrace. It is unfathomable, really, that you can see things that are so far away. Incomprehensible distances, uncountable stars, unimaginable planets, and fantastical clouds of gas and dust are all elements in the indescribable beauty of the night sky. Yellowstone is huge and stunning in its natural beauty, but its all relative when you consider the planet which contains it, the galaxy in which the planet resides, and the universe which holds it all.

1 Like

Wonderful!! I love that you included Antares and the Rho region! I love the dust fingers that reach out to it. A squeak more to the right would have given it a bit more room, but I can’t really complain about it. Lovely and subtle processing. You might consider some gradient lightening in the upper corners – just a bit.

To composite a FG just leave the tripod in the same place and layer the separate exposure in PS and mask. If you didn’t get the composition right until it was dark (likely), a small low level lighting panel might let you shoot a different exposure for the FG. Maybe even light from a smartphone. (Not the flashlight but a white “picture” displayed might be enough light.) Or diffuse the flashlight strongly with your hand.

I’m looking forward to a trip to the eastern Sierra in June, with the Milky Way at the top of the agenda. Foregrounds won’t be as interesting as yours, though.

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Thanks Diane. I lightened the corners just a tad, but the top right still had a stubborn spot. I just cropped it a tad to cover that. I forgot to mention that I did use low level LED lights on this. I have 2 Lumicube 2.0s. I put a dome type diffuser on each one. I have a small light bar that I use to mount them to a separate tripod. I used on on level 2 for the flowers, and one pointed up towards the tree. It’s still legal to use these in Yellowstone, but not in Grand Teton. In the interest of not changing any one else’s experience too much, I try to keep them as dim as possible. I know that compositing will drastically increase the quality of my images! I know how to capture a separate image for a foreground, I just don’t know how to use photoshop to do the work of merging them! That’ll be my homework before April’s new moon comes along! Funny you say that about the phone. Before I got these lights, I used to use my phone by displaying a photo of my wife on fairly high brightness that had nice warm tones. It seemed to give a perfectly complimentary tone of light to a night scene! Have so much fun in the Sierras! Thats a bucket list location


for me for sure!

What beauty Paul! Your composition using that tree works really well, and I like your thoughts on the small, young, beauty expanding into the infinite, old, beauty.

I composite in the foreground typically; it’s hard to beat for short shutter speeds with detail and low noise. (Now that I have a full-frame camera, I’ll probably start playing with long exposures for the land if there is no motion.) I like the results, but in scenes with a complex horizon it can challenge my masking skills. For example the trees on the left would be tricky, especially where the sky peeks through the branches. Nevertheless, I find the results worth the effort and would love to see some images if you start playing with it. If you run into issues, post an example and I’m sure that those of us who do can share tips that we find helpful.

Your lighting here is wonderful – I was assuming it was some moonlight. I had no idea that LL lighting would be illegal anywhere, but that makes sense. Most of my shooting is in pretty remote places but the Alabama Hills could be a different story. It will be a solo trip so I’ll try to avoid any other photographers, but there may be some there.

Compositing two layers by masking is so easy in PS. For this composition I wouldn’t try to mask around the tree, although it can be done with some advanced techniques. I’d just mask the bottom layer to reveal the FG, up to about the base of the tree. With a masked layer you can tweak the mask ad infinitum, and do a “grouped” adjustment layer (or set of layers in a folder) to modify anything that an adjustment layer can do – brightness, contrast and WB most obviously for a case like this.

Check out my tutorial on Layers on my web site. The one on Virtual Fill Flash is the technique I used on the bison. I think you have mastered that in LR, and it’s always best to do as much tonal work as possible in the raw stage.

I think the reason it’s illegal in Teton is because of the Moulton Barn. So many people want to photograph that at night that it really became difficult to get the shot you were looking for. I love Yellowstone at night. My wife and I will pull into the park about when everyone is leaving for the day. By midnight, there are very few cars around. Sometimes I actually want there to be someone out there at a given feature to make it feel a little more safe! Thanks for those tutorials. I will definitely check them out.

Paul, I think this is gorgeous!!! It’s hard to believe you captured it all at once. For me, it has an immediate emotional impact. It’s got a primal feeling, like it would not be at all unheard of for a wild animal to walk out of the bushes! It feels like it could be an image from thousands of years ago. Fabulous!!
My only personal note is that, for me, (and probably ONLY me), it feels a bit like it’s tilted to the left. I know that’s an optical illusion, but the tree and the Milky Way are both leaning that way, and there’s not much to counteract that.
Once again, well done!!!