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 sky and Light house seem OK to me - the question is the blend
Creative direction
Nobska Light House is a bright one and it is very challenging to photograph it with the stars
Specific Feedback
1 - does the blend work ? WB OK ?
2 - Methods to select the sky - I wasn’t able to select the sky in PS well enough and hence did it using TK9
3 - Anything else
Technical Details
Sky - 10 seconds - ISO 3200 - Laowa 10 mm lens
Foreground same lens - perspective corrected in LR
Description
Nobska light house is in Falmouth on the Cape in Massachusetts. As you can see, it is quite bright and the challenge is to show case both - the Lt Hs and the MW
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The sky and stars look very strange in the enlarged view. What camera, and what noise reduction have you used, if any?
This doesn’t look like a 10mm view of the Milky Way – is it a big crop?
@Diane_Miller
My apologies for the wrong tech info - Both we with the 14-24mm - foreground at 24 and sky at 14. However the sky was photographed behind the lighthouse and then blended
Camera - Nikon Z9
The stars appear strange to you perhaps because there are too many
Image opened in Nx studio and then processed in PS. I did use the Astro Noise red feature in Nx Studio
I’m not familiar with Nx Studio but I wonder if its astro noise correction is the source of the very peculiar artifacts in the sky. You could compare with raw conversion in ACR (or LR if you use it), and then try Topaz Denoise as the first step when you open in PS.
Here is a portion of a recent MW image, with the screen split on a diagonal from the LL to the UR. The UL half is the raw file with no adjustments, and the LR half is with Topaz Denoise, Severe Noise algorithm at default settings. Canon R5, Sigma 28mm f/1.4. The two were layered, flattened, cropped and exported with no resizing so if you zoom in twice you will see them at 100% resolution. This is the galactic center area to the right of the lighthouse. Compare it with clicking twice on your post to get roughly the same area.
Your camera and lens should give at least equal quality. The difference is in the processing.
Karl, Since I’m not an astro photographer, the stars look fine to me, but @Diane_Miller is quite adept. Perhaps you can reduce or eliminate what looks like white blow out on the front of the house. The lit up foreground grasses and fence add to the image and its framing. Nice composition. Nice image.
That really does look like a challenge to photograph! It appears that the sky may be a tad cooler than the foreground. I have experienced similar artifacts in the sky when I over sharpen an image before reducing the noise. Thats a tough one that I probably would have given up on so kudos for finding a work-around. Can you further reduce highlights on the buildings? Maybe darken the reeds a bit on the left side. I’d definitely try processing the sky again before blending it in.
