Osiris Rising + Repost

Sensational! A rare set of leading lines into the night sky here. The tone of sky and land flow together nicely. I gave up on the photo art vs not thing long ago and just describe the image instead, as you've done here. Towards the top the stars seem either longer or larger for some reason?

Thanks Marc. I'm guessing star rotation or distortion. It's in all of the exposures I took here...so dunno. It's not a result of the stacking as I manually rotated the 4 exposures and lined them up to as close to perfect as I could. Really helped with the noise reduction shooting at ISO 6400...did not think it would work, but it did, surprisingly. Made blending the foreground in a huge pain in the ass though, but it was worth the effort. Think this one took about 3 hours to do. Almost pixel by pixel in some spots.

Perhaps a crop? I'd hate to lose any stars though...do you feel it hurts the image overall?

Great leading lines here. Love shots like this and the comp is perfect. No nits from me.

Dark? No, just stunning. Keep em coming

A rock solid 'starscape'! The landscape is the perfect luminosity for night, IMO.
I assume the 4 exposures for the land was for extended DOF, but I'm curious as to why 4 sky exposures.
My only advice would be to crop the top and sides a bit to eliminate the flaws created by edge of lens quality limitations @ f2.8.

Thanks for the comments and feedback.

John, the 4 images for the foreground were for controlling the midtones, highlights, and shadows. Seems I had my camera set up at an angle that allowed me to get the entire scene in focus in a single exposure...for a change, at least the land portion at least. My reasoning behind the 4 exposures for the sky was that I shot at such a high ISO, and a single exposure would have resulted in a lot of noise. Using multiple exposures and stacking them on top of each other reduces the overall amount of noise. Only problem with doing this with a landscape type of shot at night is the stars move fairly quickly. In order to stack them properly I had to manually rotate and align them which in turn made the blend between sky and horizon even more difficult. Wasn't much fun and I almost gave up, but eventually figured it out. Can't wait till they build sensors that allow us to capture entire scenes at night with a single exposure.

How is this crop?

Beautiful, Nicolaus! The foreground is killer, and fantastic positioning of the milky way.

For stacking / averaging exposures keep in mind that with ultra wide lenses there's a lot of nonlinear distortion which means that simply rotating is not sufficient to align the stars. My guess is that's why your stars on the top and edges look a little elongated - either from the blending process, or from the initial capture (due to distortion). I got a lot more behavior like that with my 16-35 than with the Nikon 14-24.. not sure which lens you use.

If you crop the landscape in all the exposures and use good panoramic stitching software that automatically handles nonlinear distortion parameters (eg. PTGui), then you can do it all automatically. I always use that method when shooting high iso starscapes and it works quite nicely.

Strong comp and a believable star-field well processed. What's not to like?.

Thanks for the tip Floris. I used lightroom's distortion correction before aligning which didn't do a whole lot, but it's nice to know PTGui may work. Did not even think about that. Have not used that program for a couple years now, but I still have it. Will try that out next time. No way I'm redoing this one...hahah, way too much work. Hopefully the crop will suffice.

Used a 5dm2 and 16-35II in this shot. I'm moving to the Nikon 14-24 and new body once I get enough money saved up. From everything I've read on them, they will be the go to combo for landscapes for a few years. Don't see Canon coming out with anything that can beat that for a while.

That small crop did the trick! I also like the placement of the Milky Way here.

Very cool indeed. Where is this??

And you can easily print single exposure from these cameras. Clients want imagery that the like and dont care about a bit of noise. Get the shot and save yourself the pixel peeping for other shots.

Sick work

aF

Aaron, thank you, and this is in the Wind River Basin, Wyoming. Tons of random badland areas all over this portion of Wyoming.

I understand cameras these days are more than capable of rendering certain scenes in a single exposure. However, I've yet to see that done with a foreground where there is little to no light (the moon was only a sliver and gone by 2130). Guess I'm a bit anal when it comes to noise in my prints (as well as sharpness...dynamic range...blah blah). Can't sell anything to someone if I'm not completely satisfied with it myself. I always ask if it's of a high enough quality that I would display it in my own home. If not, I usually discard it. Not very good at marketing am I? It's really just more of a hobby for me than anything. If I sell a print here or there..cool, but I mostly do it for the sheer joy I get from creating something interesting.

Wow, that's some light and comp. And excellent badlands image. Must be one heck of a place of daylight photography too.

A real standout, Nicolaus. One of the best night skies I've seen in awhile. Well seen and managed.

Nice! Works well!

Fantastic. One of the best starscape shots. Beautiful leading lines on the foreground, and the overall tones and brightness are perfect.

Love it! Great job

Wow, one incredible, amazing image. Never seen such a remarkable and extraordinary foreground for a 'starscape'. Stunning.

Stunning image Nicolaus. The little bit of cropping you did in the repost makes it even better.

Pretty awesome Nicolaus! Keep em coming...

This is a fabulous image and an impressive piece of work regardless of how you achieved it, Nicolaus!

I would have gone for ISO-3200 in the sky as I have found the noise gain from 3200 to 6400 isn't worth the tad more celestial detail you get?

Thanks everyone.

Morkel, I used 6400 more or less to see if I could, and it worked great. Especially with the stacking.

This is excellent! What a foreground, and awesome positioning of the Milky Way. Beautifully done!

Chris

Awesome shot from top to bottom.

Stunning night scene Nicolaus! I like the cropped version best.

Outstanding composition and processing. Looks like an alien world.

Absolutely stunning shot Nicolaus,

Gary.

NICE I see/experience Aaron's point with the buying public, but I'm on your side. As photographer's we see the flaws in our images. And what's the point if we wouldn't buy it.

Yeow! That's a great photo of the Milky Way. I definitely do not feel like it is "photo art". Sounds like the technical details made it pretty hard to edit, but the result is stunning!