Moonlit Rock

Welcome to NPN Serkan. Very interesting rock formation and I like the clouds and mountains in the backround. Well done.

Hi, Serkin--welcome to NPN!
An interesting first post. I really like the composition, a cool formation and some great atmosphere!
Shooting with moonlight is somewhat a matter of personal taste, some folks will love the idea and others will just be baffled by it. I have no problem with the concept, but for the results here i fall in the latter camp, because it doesn't feel consistent to me, and i believe that art/photography should be consistent. The foreground looks identical to a (relatively saturated) typical daylight foreground. The sky here is completely identical to a daylight sky, same color and brightness, the only difference is that there are stars visible. So, the question that immediately pops in my head is, Why? Is it to create a surreal landscape with stars? Or is it meant to evoke the feeling of being there in the moonlight? If it were the latter, then my strategy would have been to go much darker overall, to be consistent with the night time atmosphere. So, I assume it is the former, but welcome your thoughts on the subject. I'm just not crazy about the night-as-day look.
Look forward to more from you!

Serken, welcome to NPN and your first posted image.

Truly an interesting rock formation and a great subject to work with. Makes one wonder how these things in nature take place and seemingly it is not surrounded by bigger rocks that we can see in this image anyway.

I was surprised at how light the image is from just moon light, almost looks like normal daylight overall. The stars provide insight to the TOD of it being nighttime, but I'd expect the sky to look different overall. Not sure it it is the lightness or the color, or both.

Well this is an interesting first post and we look forward to more in the future.

Thanks for the comments so far. I was also thinking about the interesting light issues when I was dealing with it in the PS. It was exteremely foggy when we found this place and we decided to set up our tent and sleep, hoping for a clearence in the sky lately. Just about 1.5-2 hours after the sunset I woke up and saw that the clouds were cleraed except the small ones in the canyon.

Foreground was lighted by the very bright moon situated at the left hand side of the photo. But I suspect that some twilight might effect the right hand side background, that is the way of sunset. I am aware of your concerns but the image consists of only one image and I did not blend for the stars.

Cheers.

I looked at this and formed an impression of it before reading Stan's comments, and I will state my initial impressions although I definitely see Stan's point of view.

Apart from the pleasing formal aspects of the composition, I notice the overal color saturation which is on the high end to my perception, but there are some nice contrasts of yellow and blue, red and green. In form and texture, I love the excellent sharpness (accentuated by the hard shadows from the distant, tiny, single-light point-source) contrasted with the extreme softness of the clouds in the valley and the emptiness of the sky, with the exception of distant point sources of light.

As to the central subject, anyone who has hiked probably has seen rocks stacked on top of one another -- by other hikers as a sign to others that they were there, because this isn't something that would occur naturally. This subject reminds me of that, except that this formation, while we realize it came about through erosion, could also be interpreted metaphorically as having been arranged by cosmic forces to inform us of their presence.

About three quarters of the total mass in the universe at this moment is though to be hydrogen, the simplest element. So I also see here a linkage between what we see in the image of the present moment as represented by the evanescence of the clouds and the ephemeral lives of the plants and flowers, through the longer-term history implied by the subject rock formation, back yet further to the formation of the mountains, and then further still into the stars, which turn hydrogen into the heavier elements, and depths of empty space back to the beginning of everything.

When we have spent a long time looking at more traditional landscapes, this images does initially have a more surreal feeling to it. But then I find myself stopping to ask what is real and why should what is immediate and habitual be the only standard of "real"?

Great shot here. I like it. The only thing I would change is the blue and green saturation levels. Duplicate layer, turn into "color mode" and use the selective tool in Hue Saturation and you could lower them independently... Just an idea.

Quite fascinating. It's a bit of a puzzle to put these light and elements together. I actually wasn't thinking moonlight here. Welcome to NPN.

I read Stan's comment first, probably not fair.
The color is suspect.
I use Nikon's Capture NX2 or Phase One.
Can you change the Kelvin temp and play with that for some type of effect.
Also the red, blue, green after the selected temp.
Interesting challenge.
the fisch

Thank you all for the comments so far. I attached a less saturated version with some other white balance setting as commented by Fischer. It may look better for some of us and I think especially the colder tones on the rocks seems to be better.

But after all, this shot was taken with a very bright moon light and the ambience was quite similar to what you see in the first place. It may look surreal at first but it is something real.

Looks better in the 2nd version IMO. Nice job.