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
Can you see enough?
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 human eye finds it difficult, if not impossible, to discern traces of illumination during Nautical Twilight without artificial light, e.g. flash. Using an earlier image to capture the foreground structures provides an opportunity to merge the two images (exposure stacking) to provide some details in the foreground.
The green night-glow seen here is chemiluminescence. Sunlight deposits energy into the atmosphere during the day, some of which is transferred to oxygen molecules. This extra energy causes the oxygen molecules to rip apart into individual oxygen atoms. This happens particularly around 100km in altitude. However, atomic oxygen isn’t able to get rid of this excess energy easily and so acts as a ‘store’ of energy for several hours. Eventually the atomic oxygen does manage to ‘recombine’, once again forming molecular oxygen. The molecular oxygen then releases energy, again in the form of light. In reality, the green night-glow isn’t particularly bright, it’s just the brightest of all night-glow emissions.
Technical Details
Exposure stack: Canon EOS 5D IV; Canon EF 28-70mm @ 39mm; f/9 @ 1/80 sec, -3EV, ISO 400; second image, same settings 1 minute 45 seconds later.
My tired old eyes still work fairly well, but they are really challenged with this image. It appears to be SW scene, but I have to strain and move the monitor around a bit. So, my answer is: I can’t see enough.
I appreciate the narrative. It provides information I was not aware of and explains the presentation. However, I still have difficulty with not seeing enough.
Lovely narrative, however, I must agree with the previous poster. Maybe your monitor is brighter than mine but there is nothing discernible to comment on re the artistic merits of the image.
I couldn’t see anything so I downloaded it and started to raise the exposure. A wonderful image was revealed. I suggest you raise it as well to show more information.
Thank you @Jim_Gavin , @Igor_Doncov , @mark28 for your comments. My display is calibrated to 100 candelas per square meter. What you see is what you would experience in the field. Now, I am introducing a Rework with the earlier image, stacked with the darker. This is what you, I would think, is what you would like to see. I could not achieve this without exposure stacking.
My first reaction to the rework is to be struck by the fantasy created by the oddly shaped hoodoos, the strangely colored predawn light, the clouds over the little hoodoo on the center horizon that look like a tree, and the creative luminosity. Hobbit country, for sure.
Thank you @HeathBarbier for you kind remarks. It is a very alien landscape. The original post is what one would actually see without auxiliary light—almost nothing. Then I stacked a shot over it from the same spot minutes before when there was some light. I stated that earlier.
Thank you @Dick_Knudson for your enlightened remarks. I’ve never seen any other photo with the green light let alone explaining how and why it occurs. It is not the infamous “Green Flash.” The clouds over that hoodoo do resemble a tree.
