This photo was taken during David Kingham’s night photography workshop two years ago. It shows the Snake River, Grand Teton and the Milkyway.
Feedback Requests
I’ve processed and reprocessed this and other night shots multiple times trying to get a feel for what the correct night sky color was. Without using a color spectrophotometer, there’s now way to be sure. Plus as multiple night photography web sites indicate, the sky’s color depends on how much light pollution you have as well as the presence of either red or green airglow. This version “feels” about right, although the core of the Milkyway seems a bit bright and somewhat reddish.
Pertinent Technical Details
R5, 16-36 f2.8 @ 27 mm, f/2.8, 13 s, iso 5000, tripod. AI noise reduction in Lightroom. The orange in the sky on the left is the night glow from Jackson, WY.
A very nice capture. This sort of image has a large subjective component, and a lot of issues dealing with sensor capture of low light levels – the obvious being noice, but also distorted color. The NR looks good at this size and colors believable – as you say they can vary a lot. The magenta in the MW feels off, though. The brightest areas are colored by dense stars and filtered by cosmic dust and usually (on average, whatever that means) appear a bit more brownish than here. The quality of the stars is good.
I would love to see more sky, as it is the most dramatic part of the image. Maybe more light on the river would balance it more?
I have had poor results (viewed at 100%) with any NR I’ve ever tried, including the latest in LR. Shooting 7-10 exposures and processing in Sequator (PC) or Starry Landscape Stacker (Mac) gives much better results and does an amazing job of lining up the stars (that move from frame to frame) from one frame with the horizon/FG.
Mark: I have yet to dabble with images like this but I love viewing them. I appreciate @Diane_Miller’s expertise and hope one day to get into this genre. I see Diane’s point about the sky but this comp works for me. Beautiful scene nicely captured and presented. >=))>
