What changed: Had a mishap and had to redo from scratch. Here is the current revision. Pulled green out of the sky. I went for the black sky over blue, but cooled the temp towards blue. So far I am liking it.
Added after receiving feedback from the community.
The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic / Expressive
About This Image
I had been planning on trying this shot at Pinnacles NP for a long time. Finally made it. 85 degrees at night. 2.5 mile hike with my leg bothering me. Glad I did it though. Had some food and plenty of water, extra batteries for light…just in case.
Took a long time for me to process & edit this image. Haloing, hot pixels. Relatively happy with it so far…still thinking about what could be better.
Feedback Requested
I do not do much night photography. My night photo process is slow and not fluid.
-Wondering about overall composition and the framing. Take something off the top & bottom?
-Lighting of the landscape vs lighting of the sky. More or less?
-See any hot pixels?
The overall composition and framing are excellent James. I could see letting the Milky Way rotate slightly more, but that’s a tiny nit.
I’m not a Milky Way expert, more of a wannabe, but I think it is a lot like black and white in that it always bends reality a bit. This is very reflective of that reality, but my personal preference is a bit more contrast. You have great detail in the land, and my preference is to see that a bit more. In addition, I like a touch more contrast in the sky. All personal preference, but here’s a visual example:
Thanks for the great feedback John. Mirrored my own thoughts. And it does look to me like there are more hot pixels. Definitely gave the processor a workout with the long exposures.
I think your planning paid off! I really like the composition and how you were able to position yourself/camera to get the core coming out of the gap in the mountains/rock formations.
Like John and many… I’m no expert on either capturing the night sky and the Milky Way, nor am I proficient in processing the images. I have dabbled and actually have a couple that I’m ultimately happy with - however, any knowledge or processing I still rely on going back to YT videos, so unfortunately I can’t offer HOW you might maximize your image.
So… but I can offer my observation. For me, I think the sky is a little green? I think maybe as one lightens the night sky this may happen, but I like to see more of the deep, dark blue. I like how John also brought out some contrast. I think especially in the core this could use some contrast and more definition.
The stars look really good. I see you were at 13s which is what I usually target. I know they say you can go longer, but really beyond 15s, they really move too much for my tastes.
I was going to ask if this was a single exposure, or did you blend the foreground? One technique I learned is having a “blue hour” landscape frame that you then blend with the Milky Way sky. Of course there is a fine balance because too bright of a landscape looks fake and unreal. But if you think about what light falls on a landscape during say a 60s exposure or longer, and maybe there’s a crescent moon… you actually can get a well lit landscape late at night. Anyway, blending the blue hour and the dark night star isn’t too bad with all the tools and techniques in PS these days. To that topic, I do wish there was just a little more light on the landscape - as those rock formations are very interesting! And definitely don’t crop any sky!
Hot pixels and such? One thing I do for almost every single image I’m gonna spend time on, is zoom to 100% in ACR, and scroll/page thru the image taking care of hot pixels, dust bunnies, etc. etc. I do that once near the beginning of my workflow.
Thanks Lon. I am definitely lightening the foreground. The 480 sec exposure was for the foreground, which was a blend. I took a couple of blue hour shots but, for whatever reason, did not expose them well. Hence the 480 sec past blue hour shot before it became too dark.
I see what you are saying about the core. I wasn’t feeling like I had the sky quite like I wanted it. I"ll be going back to work on the sky colors and core definition some more.
The composition is great. I love you placed the core of the Milky Way coming out of the low spot in the ridge.
I agree with the other comments. The sky could use a little more contrast and try to bring down the green tint in it. The foreground has a lot of hidden detail that I think you can bring out. I made some adjustments to the JPEG and I think with the RAW file you could do a lot better.
I selected the sky and added a bump in contrast and made slight curve adjustments to try and tame those greens, I think you can do better in the RAW processing. I also used a Darks mask to isolate the land and brought up the luminosity with a curve adjustment. There is a ton of detail in there that will add to the overall scene. Night time photos are not as dark as we think they should be. We tend to think it is dark outside at night, but in fact we can see a lot more than we think when we let our eyes adjust.
Anyway, you have a good photo and room to work it. I added my adjustment for you to see where it could go.
I’m delighted to see another MW image – it’s been a quiet season so far! Very good comments above – I also feel you could bring out more detail in both land and sky, and @Youssef_Ismail has shown a very good example. Few places are dark anymore, with all the light and atmospheric pollution. Your technique for the exposures and blending is the way to go without subtle ambient moonlight.
Hot pixels are dealt with pretty effectively in Lightroom / ACR, and to some extent in other converters. An internet search will give information for optimizing it with whatever converter you are using. Downloading the file and boosting it with a curve I only see a few hot pixels that could be removed with the spot healing brush. It looks like you have done a good job removing shot noise.
The stars look good at this size and I agree with not going above about 13 sec, to keep stars as points. My own limit, with full-frame is more like 8 sec. An equal issue for me is the aberrations of wide-angle lenses, and I resort to processing in PixInsight to get nice stars, but I doubt anyone who isn’t doing dedicated astrophotography would go that far. There are a couple of tutorials on my web site for anyone who is curious: www.DianeDMiller,com.
I’d love to see any tweaks you decide to make – you have very good material to work with!
There is so much bad advice on the internet for processing MW images, and I’m glad to see you haven’t overdone it. Some honest work with curves is the way to go and @John_Williams and @Youssef_Ismail have shown good examples, for both sky and land.
Thanks Youssef, Good explanation, very helpful. Nice work on the jpg. I am slowly finding my footing as to how much light to bring up in a night photo.
Thanks Diane. I find night sky photos to be a real balancing act. Getting your blue hour composition right…only one camera and don’t accidentally move anything. Next timing your shot right; the X-T5 with it’s sensor works at 12 or 13 seconds. More light in…more color. Stacking the photos to reduce noise from high ISO flattens the dynamic range. I have used sequator which is free and pretty easy to use, but it flattens the image a LOT . Yikes! Then you have to bring back color and definition in the sky. Software that handles the stacked images better (PixInsight, Siril, etc) have a learning curve . Looking at star trackers (more gear to carry)>>single longer exposure with low ISO and a clean sky shot, but blurry landscape. Can cause it’s own issues when masking and overlaying in Photoshop (or other image processor SW). Nick Paige simplifies and uses a single sky shot and deals with the noise post processing. No easy way. All require post processing work and some finesse. All of that brings me to appreciate the other eyes on here in NPN even more. Thx all.
Yes, it’s very frustrating. I have a Mac so don’t know Sequator, but I’m surprised it flattens dynamic range. PI doesn’t, but as you say, it is more sophisticated. It is miles ahead of any of our “daytime photography” apps for NR in a crowded star field and for correcting the odd shapes of stars from lens aberrations. The PI learning curve gets simpler every year and it gives decent NR if you register and stack maybe 10-12 shots without tracking.
James, I can offer zero help in the processing department because of my inexperience with night photography. But I will offer a few observations. I really like the composition. To my eye, the original image seems a lot sharper than the revision. The revision seems to have lost a lot of detail in the FG. So, I like the sharpness of the og and the color and exposure of the revision.
I think the new version is a great improvement in tonalities, but there are a lot of artifacts in the sky, presumably from denoising? And there does seem to be some loss of detail in the FG, probably also from NR. I don’t know what your steps (or software) are but maybe it’s worth trying something else (or less) with NR? You have a nice image that’s worth the work.
Thanks for the eyes on Michael, I was thinking that when I used LRc denoise but was not comparing to the previous version. More focused on the path ahead. Guess I’ll go back and troubleshoot that. I think I’ve got the workload path down pretty well by now.
Thanks Diane, Yes…Lightroom denoise was having some unwanted effects. Didn’t do anything different from a regular landscape photo. The night sky photo with higher ISO must be more susceptible. I denoised early then blended. Should work in theory…but…maybe not. I’ll have to go back and troubleshoot. I have Topaz too so I can do some good comparisons.
I’d be interested in the results. The only thing I have been happy with is shooting a quick set of 8-12 and processing in PixInsight. Even without tracking, with 8-10 sec exposures they will align and noise will average out nicely. But I’m a pixel-peeper.
You’d think eventually they could train denoise on starscapes.
. Yikes! Then you have to bring back color and definition in the sky. Software that handles the stacked images better (PixInsight, Siril, etc) have a learning curve 
. Looking at star trackers (more gear to carry)>>single longer exposure with low ISO and a clean sky shot, but blurry landscape. Can cause it’s own issues when masking and overlaying in Photoshop (or other image processor SW). Nick Paige simplifies and uses a single sky shot and deals with the noise post processing. No easy way. All require post processing work and some finesse. All of that brings me to appreciate the other eyes on here in NPN even more. Thx all.