Walking on Stars [+brighter vers.]

This is one of the most beautiful and evocative night time photograph I have seen. Stunning all the way around. I also love the suggestive title.

Superb night image Floris, I love the amount of stars and the white 'pebbles' on the beachwhich seem to be their counterparts The Milky way is a great bonus for a already great sky!

floris - i love this - superbly thought out and executed. obviously the white pebbles, as your title suggests, mirror the stars - as with the other compositional elements (waves mirror milky way). I made a comment on marc's post re. choice of white balance in these starry images and i am not taken with what you have chosen here. you might explore the one that he chose (3200) as I quite liked the cold blues that resulted. i am particularly intrigued by you multiple exposes to minimize star motion .... all in all, fabulous image.

Well Floris well found and well seen....The cool thing about night images is that the camera makes up for our lack of low light color sensitive ( not sure if it's rods or cones ) in our eyes. So the slight tinge of pink in the sky in the milky way would not normally been seen without a camera. What really makes the image for me is the curving sweep of the beach with the white pebbles that mirrors the sky. Nice.

Paul

The larger view really does help you appreciate the image. Very peaceful and serene, must have been incredible in person. Great work.

That is an amazing view Floris. I really enjoyed the large version to see how nice this really is. Beautiful work!

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

Floris,
This is a fabulous capture. I prefer just a bit brighter foreground, but that's my taste only. I do have to ask. When you say "Three exposures for the sky, f/2.8, iso 3200, 15 sec, aligned by hand with PTGui and averaged in PS. This process helps minimize star motion and reduces noise." are you shooting the same image for the sky and overlaying it, or did you do a pano of the sky for some reason? What does PTGui bring to the table in this instance if you did the alignment by hand? When you say you averaged in PS, is that just their photomerge? Thanks for any further clarification on this!

Beautiful. Well thought and executed. The black rocks and white coral make for a facinating fg, which I'm sure is only more so in a print.

Yep, the larger version has to be seen to appreciate.
Very original with the waves below. Wonderful work.

*The sky in Hawaii (and the middle of the Caribbean on a ship) is as clear as I have ever seen. Just amazing.

Awesome! You really nailed this one, Floris, and did this beach justice. I really miss this place and you are making it worse!

Thanks folks!

Wick - I took three images of the same scene, well, except for the stars moving. Then used PTGui, which is panorama stitching software, to make a 'panorama' of those three images.. which basically meant aligning the stars properly (which is not trivial due to lens distortions). The automated algorithm as trouble with scenes like this (which is why photoshop can't do it), so I used their manual control points assistant to manually set the stitching parameters. Then I saved the aligned layers and averaged them in photoshop using smart objects stack mode mean.

Stuart - I don't find the cold white balance to fit this scene, since well, it was a warm beach and it is a warm and inviting feeling I want to convey. I find the magenta's help bring out that inviting feeling.

This is a magnificent image Floris! The larger view is fantastic but you really need to view this in a ddark room to get the full impact of this well thought out image.

I love photos that tell a story. That makes this image a grand epic!

As always ... loved another one of your images!

At first I though putting the horizon in the middle would not be good, but I think it works perfectly. The larger version definitely adds the needed detail and I finally learned how to do this kind of shots in total darkness. Thanks for the post!

Quite honestly Floris this is too dark on my monitor to appreciate fully. I have my monitor in web luminance and calibrated but the image is really dark. Some of the new monitors out of the box (too bright) might view this fine though. Anyways it looks like it is an awesome shot but could you post a brighter version?

Mark - it is intended to be dark, but in a dark room with a calibrated monitor you should be able to see all the details (I can on mine). I don't know what you mean by 'web luminance', but I always keep my working monitor (Apple display) set to the minimum luminance possible. You can see it a little better on my website, thanks to the darker background - Walking on Stars. It looks acceptable on my uncalibrated monitors at work in full light too. If I increase the brightness of the image the effect of the white stones on black and white stars on dark blue starts to get lost.

Anyways, with those caveats, here is a brighter version (can't post a new larger version, unfortunately).

what a great mood!!
fantastic night scene at least you need small chair to set looking at stars with a girl friend ( very romantic)

The first one looks great to me shading out the light in my room. Out on the Alaska peninsula in Chignik Lagoon at night in winter, with no artificial light from anywhere on a cold clear night, i use to love to lay back in the snow and stare at the starry sky till it got to cold to bear. Nice shot! :)

Must be hard to reproduce the actually experience of being. What beauty are world is filled with and this is a nice taste of that.
Nice creation Floris. Some fg water mist due to long exposure would have been icing but I don't think I could pull off something this nice.

Great job

This is lovely, Floris. Glad you suggested looking at the image with a darker background. That did the trick for me.
I especially like how the Milky Way doesn't overpower the scene as so many evening images do, but instead complements the entirety.

Thanks for posting the the brighter one. I love the whole vibe of the image! I have always especially loved the ocean at night under the stars, and Hawaii is the icing on the cake. This epitomizes it well.

As far as calibrated monitor. Yes, mine was calibrated for web when viewing this and it is still too dark for my taste. Maybe in a totally dark room and with a black background it would be better, but I don't think that is the average setting people will view this in. So probably two versions are helpful.

Beautiful shot! I'd have like to spend the night on that beach.

Chris

Beautiful image and what a great way to spend the night. I actually prefer the lighter version here. Nicely none.

awesome work floris... i really love the sharpness in the foreground. did you blend for focus as well as exposure? i think i prefer the lighter version, only because i can discern more of the distant land under the stars.

Thanks Navin - yes, I always adjust the focus when I switch to my star exposures (and it usually takes a lot of guess and checking to nail the focus).

Pretty cool, Floris! I like the simple comp here, the pebbles do make the shot. I think the lighter version is a big improvement, at least for web viewing. I hesitate to add, but my initial reaction (my vicious critic side) was similar to the reaction i had with Marc's post--that ive seen so many Milky-Ways-at-ISO3200 that its starting to get repetitive. In some respects, i wish it were shot at ISO 800, which would probably be a bit closer to the way you saw it. That would make the shot less appealing from an aesthetic perspective, but more so to me from a cool-nature-shot perspective. It depends on your goals i guess...
Anyhow--very nice, thanks for sharing!

Stan - I must admit I'm completely lost as to how shooting at iso 800 would make the image more like how I saw it. The only thing I can think of is that you'd like to see it darker and with less contrast (which I agree would be more natural), but that is entirely achievable with the iso 3200 exposure (just drop the exposure in ACR by 2 stops). The only thing iso 800 would give me is less noise at the same exposure and same processing adjustments (digital sensors are linear). But you said you prefer the lighter version.... so I am confused. Can you explain a little more?

I will say that I do not like how the camera renders so many friggin' stars.. you can't see that many with the naked eye, but thus far I haven't figured out how to make some of them go fade away nicely. Down sizing for web only exacerbates this problem too.

By the way, in this case the exposure difference between the foreground and sky was about 2 stops, which is about the same as most sunset/sunrise images anybody ever posts. ie. give me a clean iso 409,600 iso sensor and I could have shot this in a single exposure with minimal processing at iso 409,600, f/18, 15 seconds with a 2-stop hard GND. (that is iso 3200 +5 stops for the f/16 +2 stops for the GND: 3200*2^7 = 409,600).

Badass sir. Awesome site to juxtapose the two elements. And of course great blending. Something to chew on. Thanks!

aF

I love it !, When you see the larger version you can feel the mode as you are really there

Creative and perfectly executed shot. Love it!

The glowing coral is a unique complement to the Milky Way. I have the preference for the brighter version. Enchanting work.

Good job getting away from the lights on Maui. I always think of the north part of the island (past Hana) for that, but you certainly found a dark spot on the south shore. This works very well for me. The stars look incredible and the curve of the beach and surf are very pleasing. I do slightly prefer the brighter version.

Came back for a second look. Very nice shot Floris!

Wish I had a dark room right about now to view this one! Cause it looks very impressive right bout now! Pretty amazing details there Floris!

I will say that I do not like how the camera renders so many friggin' stars.. you can't see that many with the naked eye, but thus far I haven't figured out how to make some of them go fade away nicely. Down sizing for web only exacerbates this problem too.

Yes, that's all i was saying--sorry for being confusing with 'ISO 800'--i just meant that if the only thing you changed was dropping the ISO to 800--there would be fewer stars (and less noise...) When i said i preferred the 'lighter' version, i guess i should have said 'the more contrasty' version since its really the brightness of the high-lites that i'm talking about. Would three really bright stars look better than 3,000 pale ones?? I dunno...too much for me to ponder right now

This is really beautiful! I love the details and prefer the lighter version.

Nicely done Floris, I like the position of the milky way in relation to the landscape. I am curious why you used a 15 sec exposure @ iso 3200 instead of 30 sec @ iso 1600? At 14mm you should be able to pull off 30 second exposures without any star movement.

You mentioned a lot of guessing when focusing on the stars...here's a simple little trick that you may or may not know to help you nail focus the first time, if your camera has live-view that is...

First set your lens to infinity focus (this step becomes more crucial as the focal length of your lens gets shorter). Then set your camera's ISO to 1600 or 3200 and set the exposure at 30 sec. and engage live-view. Then magnify the image as much as possible and scroll around the sky until you find a bright star. Once you find a star simply turn your focusing ring and you will be able to see the changes in real-time on your live-view and therefore achieve proper focus the first time.

Zack - you still do get some star motion at 30 seconds, even at 14mm. It's minimal, and unnoticeable at web size, but it's there, and for large prints it bothers me. The stars in this image are perfectly round circles at 100%.

I always use live view to compose, and did try the method you mention, but I wasn't able to get a sufficiently bright star for it to work. That might be because when I started shooting there was still some twilight glow in the sky - the milky way wasn't even visible to the naked eye yet - so the contrast may not have been high enough to see the stars in live view.

Very cool shot floris. I also prefer the brighter version. A very original image.

Nocturnal magic! Beautifully conceived and executed.