Night's Edge

[John_Williams]

It took longer for me to find time to go back and edit this one, but here’s a new version trying to incorporate the feedback. Hopefully I haven’t mucked it up too much. I really appreciate all the suggestions and thoughts; invaluable!!!

Original version:

Critique Style Requested: Standard

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

Description

About a month ago I posted an image in the Landscape Critique Forum with a long, sad, tale of a photography trip that went a little different than I had planned.

As I wrote there, by my fourth day with COVID both my health and the sky had improved enough that I was able to make a run at the Milky Way, and this is that image.

I took the land images during the blue hour the evening prior and left my tripod in place, planning to return to shoot the sky the next morning.

It always feels a bit like torture me to wake up at the un-Godly hours the Milky Way is visible. I always lay there for a minute trying to get my bearings after the alarm goes off, and then peek out hoping against hope that the sky is cloudy and I won’t have to get up. Unfortunately, this morning the night sky was perfectly clear.

I stumbled out into the morning cold, and made my way back to the tripod. It was a bit tricky to find my tripod in the inky black, despite the fact that I had carefully noted landmarks on my way back from shooting the evening prior. (This was especially true navigating all the cholla on the ground. Those of you that have hiked in Cholla will know what I mean.)

Once out there though, standing in the quiet solitude of wilderness I was filled with awe at the majesty of the universe and my small place in it. There’s typically an incredible peace to photographing the Milky Way for me (with just a background hint of angst, wondering what wild creature is about to hurt me), and I love watching the camera open up the darkness around me when I see the images on the LCD screen.

Standing there taking it all in, I also realized just how bad my night vision is. I could see the wonder of the night sky, but even a dramatic Milky Way is still pretty dim. I could see silhouettes in the land and on the horizon, but not much detail and no colors. Because of that, much like black and white photography, for me night sky images are more an interpretation of the light as opposed to the reality of what I actually see (or in this case, didn’t see). And just as in black and white photography, that opens the door for a lot of choices in processing. Still on the low end of the learning curve, processing feels a bit like the wild west to me.

In the end, I played with taking this image in a different direction than my prior post. I went with more contrast and a bit less blue. I’d love your thoughts on the result, especially in comparison to the bluer, lower contrast, approach in my prior post. One of these days I hope to settle on a consistent approach, and if I do I’ll probably go back and edit my prior Milky Way images to make them more cohesive. But for now, I’m still “hacking at the ball and making huge divots.”

Specific Feedback

I’d love your thoughts on the contrast, color balance, and how natural the land appears to you. As always, any thoughts and/or suggestions are more than appreciated.

Also, what viewing conditions do you all use for these night images? I typically try to view them in a dark room in full screen mode. (I can’t speak to other browsers, but in Google Chrome I use the f11 key to hide the bright strips at the top and bottom of the browser window.)

Technical Details

I wasn’t quite sure if the 20mm would be wide enough, so I took three sets of images (left, center, and right).

Each land image was a focus stack of three photographs, blended for depth of field using Helicon Focus 8. (This lens is sharpest below f/9.0, and so I chose to blend a shallower depth of field as opposed to going with a smaller aperture.) I took these at around 5:40 pm.

Each sky image was 8 star images, combined (with a dark base image) in Sequator to reduce noise. I took these just a little after 4:00 am.

I then put them all together using PTAssembler and blended them together by hand.

[John_Williams]

In the future I’d like to play with long-exposure images for the foreground, but for now the detail in a blue-hour image is pretty addicting. The challenge is to make the land bright enough to look attractive, but yet dark enough to be believable. I find evening blue-hour images work better than morning blue-hour images. I think that is because the heart of the Milky Way is typically on the right side, so subconsciously my brain expects the land to look as if the light was coming from the right side of the image (as it does in the evening blue hour when looking south, as opposed to the subtle left-side direction that the morning blue-hour light has.)

I also find my eye is more forgiving of detail in the foreground than in the distance; it looks more natural to my eye if I process distant objects darker and lower contrast relative to objects in the foreground.

Any suggestions on how to keep the foreground looking natural, but not just a silhouette?

(Here’s a 100% crop of that center foreground cactus to show what I mean about detail without a lot of noise:)

[Paul_Holdorf]

I really like this! I don’t mind foregrounds being a bit unnaturally Light given that the Milky Way is way brighter than our eyes see it. Your foreground might stand to be brighter but I do love how crisp the focus is. I’m still stacking singles with no blending so noise can be a problem. Again, lovely image!

[Jens_Ober]

Hi John,
once again my great respect that you were photographing despite the COVID infection.

@John_Williams

I always lay there for a minute trying to get my bearings after the alarm goes off, and then peek out hoping against hope that the sky is cloudy and I won’t have to get up. Unfortunately, this morning the night sky was perfectly clear.

That doesn’t sound like an astro enthusiast to me But I know the feeling when the alarm clock rings in the middle of the night. You’re torn between pulling through and continuing to sleep. And obviously, you made the right decision here.

I really like your result. This is a great composition with the cacti in the foreground and the mountain in the background.
The sky looks great to me. The Milky Way is beautifully arranged over the landscape.
Perhaps I would try slightly burning some of the darker parts of the Milky Way core to make the sky match the rather high-contrast foreground a bit better. But that’s not a big deal.

What bothers me a bit is that the foreground glows a bit blue. In my opinion, your image could benefit from desaturating and maybe darkening the blue tones in the foreground.

@John_Williams

In the future I’d like to play with long-exposure images for the foreground, but for now the detail in a blue-hour image is pretty addicting. The challenge is to make the land bright enough to look attractive, but yet dark enough to be believable.

Lately, I’ve always been too lazy to shoot additional blue-hour foregrounds. And I was quite satisfied with the result of my images. Not least because of new software like Topaz Labs DeNoise AI. So the noise is often not such a big problem anymore.
Of course, what can always be a dealbreaker is a strong wind.

@John_Williams

Any suggestions on how to keep the foreground looking natural, but not just a silhouette?

When I shoot a blue hour foreground, I try to shoot it very late in the evening or very early in the morning so that there is as little light and shadow as possible. And in post-processing, I try to make it as dark as possible.
But as you described above, what is natural? Is it natural what you see with your own eyes?

[Diane_Miller]

You have created a wonderful image here, worth all the trouble, misery and the hike through a minefield! I think the FG looks completely natural with a very soft-light look but amazing detail. (That cholla itself would be worthy of a framed image!) The color feels completely natural, with its warmer toning compared to your earlier one with bluish light. I like both equally – I think a night scene is so open to artistic interpretation. For me, the blueish version worked beautifully with the lake and the more northern setting, and this slightly warmer one works for the desert setting.

Your acquisition and processing were heroic and well-rewarded. You’ve done the hard part very successfully! You might consider slightly more contrast (just barely) in the core region (or just boosting the darks as suggested by @Jens_Ober), and a slight lightening of the vignette in the UR corner. A common situation with MW shots is the atmospheric softening at the horizon. I don’t know if this was an exceptionally clear night or if the stitching software clarified things there, but it’s worth considering just a trace of softening of the stars there. One of the star reduction programs might work well.

[David_Kingham]

@John_Williams

Unfortunately, this morning the night sky was perfectly clear.

I know that feeling all too well! I applaud your dedication to get out there, especially amidst the cholla at night, that’s just asking for trouble. I seem to get stuck no matter how careful I am.

It’s a beautiful image that feels very well balanced with the mountain and the MW working with each other.

Just a couple of things that I feel could be improved. If you ever want to print this, then the foreground is far too dark. It looks decent on screen, which is fine if you never intend to print. I tend to go pretty dark with my foregrounds too for a natural look, but this might be a touch too far. If you use my action to see where you will lose detail, the entire foreground essentially has no detail.

A simple levels adjustment on just the foreground and bringing up the whites does wonders to pull the detail out of the cholla and makes them glow.

Also, there is some significant light pollution on the horizon that can be fixed by using a color fill layer and masking it to the lower portion of the sky.

After all those adjustments the blues were getting too saturated, so I brought those down a touch.

Here’s the tiff file with all the adjustment layers so you can see exactly what I did:
20230227 Night’s Edge.tif (13.9 MB)

I think this maintains the ‘night feel’ while keeping detail.

[John_Williams]

Thank you @Paul_Holdorf, @Jens_Ober, @Diane_Miller, and @David_Kingham !

I very much appreciate your thoughts and suggestions!

I tend to lean toward dark land with Milky Way images, but sounds like the consensus is this one went too far that way. I know that the darker an image gets the trickier the viewing conditions become, and a lighter version helps protect from that variation too. When I finalize this one, I’ll definitely open up the land some. I’ll also kill some of that blue in the foreground.

@Jens_Ober

Not least because of new software like Topaz Labs DeNoise AI.

I have not played with Topaz DeNoise; I’ll do that. When I look at my long-exposure night images of the land, even with out noise they aren’t very sharp. Are you all not finding that true for your images taken in the moonless dark?

@Diane_Miller

A common situation with MW shots is the atmospheric softening at the horizon.

That’s likely a result of Sequator and the blend. I need to go back and look at some of the single images and see what that softness looks like and how far it extends; I can then try to mimic it. I haven’t tried a star reduction program yet; I’ll play with them (I find it an odd concept to try to remove stars after trying so hard to capture them )

Thank you so much for your reply, David, and taking the time to play with the image. While I probably wouldn’t lighten the foreground as much as you did, I love everything you suggested! I especially like what you did with that color cast in the sky; I’ll for sure remember that for the future.

Thank you also for the TIFF; seeing the layers and masks is exceptionally helpful.

And finally, I love the action! I appreciate the effort you went to, to create that, and freely sharing it. Your points about shadows and highlights has definitely been true in my limited experience, and especially true the couple of times I’ve printed a Milky Way image. I’ve hacked at it in the past, but I’ll definitely be using your action in the future.

[Diane_Miller]

@David_Kingham’s interpretation is interesting – I like the extra detail in the hill but wonder if the cholla isn’t just a little too bright – although a difference when printed is certainly a valid concern. I don’t print much anymore but just rely on soft proofing and actual proof prints. Different substrates do have different dynamic ranges, so I wonder if the 10% rule applies to the different ones equally?

The stars near the horizon could be made less conspicuous with a star reduction program – there are several. If it goes too far just adjust opacity of the layer. You’d want to use a graduated mask on it anyway, so that the effect is just near the horizon. (And I hear you about working to capture them then backing off!)

[Mark_Muller]

@David_Kingham , thanks for your rework and the Tiff. I’m going Milky Way hunting tomorrow and will experiment with color fill layers to reduce light pollution on the horizon.

[Diane_Miller]

@Mark_Muller, let us know if you have luck! It’s a good time of year but a difficult time of the month as there’s an 80% moon rising at midnight. But with clear air you might get a nice sort of blue hour shot in between fading daylight and rising moonlight.

[John_Williams]

Thanks again for all the feedback! I’ve gone back and made a second run at it and posted above; hopefully I’ve at lease moved it in the right direction. I didn’t take the foreground as light as @David_Kingham; it may still be a little too dark. If you have any additional thoughts I’d love to hear them.

@Diane_Miller

The stars near the horizon could be made less conspicuous with a star reduction program – there are several. If it goes too far just adjust opacity of the layer.

Does the atmosphere reduce the clarity of the stars, the quantity of the stars, or both? In this version I tried to do a little of both; not sure if I pulled it off. Also, I targeted the lower land edge to the right, but not the edge of the mountain to the left. Is that correct? (Should the difference be noticed only where the light is coming through the thicker atmosphere that would be in play at the horizon?)

I didn’t have a star reduce program, so instead I reduced the quantity of stars using noise reduction. It still feels odd to reduce them, but I do see how the Milky Way pops out a bit more.

[Diane_Miller]

RP looks wonderful! The issue at the horizon is that you are looking through so much more thickness of the atmosphere so the stars get dimmer and the light pollution gets more noticeable. But with really good clear dark skies that can be a minimal problem.

I’m on my iPhone now but will have a better look with the laptop tonight. On the road for a few days, hoping to find clear dark skies for the MW to try with the tracker, but little hope of a FG. We’re in Rock Springs WY, this morning dealing with flying visibility, apparently from the fires in Canada! Central KS actually looked like the best option but it may be the next wild goose chase.

[David_Kingham]

Looking much better! I feel like the color in the sky is just slightly off still. I made some small tweaks using color balance and selective color to remove some of the magenta and red in the sky. I’ve attached the tiff file with layers intact for reference. I’m also assuming that your monitor is calibrated? That can make a world of difference with these tiny color tweaks.

20230227 Night’s Edge b.tif (10.3 MB)

[John_Williams]

@David_Kingham

I’m also assuming that your monitor is calibrated?

Yes, sadly; it’s all on me. Since these night images are moved away from natural color, I struggle with what should be vs. what could be. Thanks for your suggestion! I’ll keep playing with it.

[John_Williams]

@David_Kingham

selective color

I’m not familiar with Selective Color; thanks for posting the layers so I could see that. Regarding that layer, I’m not sure I understand reducing the percentage of cyan to remove red; I would expect it to do the opposite? Thanks again for your help with this!

[Diane_Miller]

Selective Color is a wonderful tool that gives control I’m not sure can be matched in Hue-Sat – at least not easily. It’s obvious how to use it from the interface and best just played with to see what happens. You can not only modify colors subtly, but also their saturation, with the balance of sliders.