Vermillion Mirror (+)
by Jared Warren
From the ever-fascinating White Pocket of the Vermillion Cliffs wilderness area. Looking forward to your candid reactions and suggestions for refinements. The terrain exposure was made a half-hour or so after sunset (and darkened down in post). I left my camera and tripod at the spot, went back to the car for a late dinner and some reading, and came back a couple hours later for the star exposure. I only got a few exposures before a cloud bank came in and obscured the stars.
A few of my own thoughts at the moment: the noise in the reflection bothers me, but I'm not sure how much of an issue it is. Acceptable as is or apply more noise reduction? [Now that I see the larger image posted here the sky noise doesn't look great either; ISO 6400, 25 sec, f/2.8]. I considered a darker terrain, but wanted to show off the interesting formations, so left it lighter than usual. I was happy to find the faint shooting stars after I pulled up the images for processing; I hadn't noticed them in the LCD screen images in the field.
Anyway, looking forward to your thoughts and suggestions.
Comments
23 commentsI don't see any noise that bothers me in the reflection. This is a spectacular image. I admire it very much. No suggestions on my part. Wish I'd made it on over to the Vermillion cliffs while I was at the GC.
pat
Topaz works well for star photo's for me, you can apply it as much or little as possible and it retains sharpness better than other NR software.
I like the photo a lot but do think it could use more NR.
The reflection would look fine with a lot of NR as you don't expect pinprick stars in a water reflection.
You brought our a lot of detail in the rock, I think it looks excellent.
Wow another sweet night shot from White Pocket. I like most everything about this and can only suggest a couple of things. I have zero aptitude for star photography so take what I say with a grain of salt. I agree with Navin, that the pool and reflection could be much darker which would help some with the noise. The reflection itself looks too bright to me anyway, which gives it an odd appearance for this time of night. There is a slight halo along the right side of the formation where it is backed by the brightest portion of the Milky Way. Not a big deal, but noticeable in the large. Love the sky and the meteors are way cool. I really enjoy these night shots of yours and I dare not show them to my wife.
This is really nicely done. You have a lot of nice browns in the Milky Way and even more in the reflection of the Milky Way. There is a hint of green airglow and near the horizon some red airglow. The reflection is well done. The streaks appear to be satellites, not meteors. A meteor streak usually stars dim, brightens and then dims again, with changes in color along the path. Your streaks are quite constant, both in brightness and color, and the start and stop abruptly like a satellite slowly rotating. Also, 4 meteors in a 25 second exposure, from different originating directions is extremely low probability as there are only a handfull of such meteors per hour over the whole sky.
Some nits:
There is a strange dark rim on the mountain peaks in the reflection. Is that due to some masking? Those dark rims do not show on the real subject.
The reflection does not have the same contrast as the subject. The reflection is much lower contrast and lacks the shadows/shading of the direct view of the rocks/mountain.
You've lost a lot of star color. For example, Antares barely shows any of its orange so easily visible with unaided eyes. ISO 6400 didn't help here. Did you reduce exposure in the raw converter to try and help star colors, then boost in post? See my article on processing to help that:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/night.photography.image.processing/
It seems that the star reflections do not line up with the stars in the sky in the middle of the image. But maybe I'm not seeing the correct stars. Was the sky and reflection done at the same time?
Perhaps doing the land in twilight and the sky later made the reflection with different shading. Try doing a long exposure on the land near the time of the sky (even in addition to the twilight image) Maybe blending those two together may make a more natural transition. But this really is a small nit, as most people may not notice this. The stars in the reflection are obviously fainter than the sky, but the mountain is brighter in the reflection. So darkening the land reflection and increasing the contrast would help bring things into balance.
A warmer color balance would restore the rich browns of the Milky Way. See the recent image here by John Neukirch.
Even with my nits, still a beutiful and striking image.
Roger
So here is another op-ed…worth whatever you think: The reflection is awesome…always water reflections are a great add’n. The only nit is the upland shoreline is dark and gets lost near the waterline. The reflection is brighter than the rock above it which makes one work this over to ‘unpack’ what is shown. Perhaps brightening the band of red/dark rock just above the water and darkening the reflection just a hair where it is brightest and closest to the water will help….concentrate the effort near the shoreline and center area where the waves are nearly as bright in the reflection as the upland. Then try darkening the sky in the reflection, just a tad to help get separation of sky from the mtn reflection…and to reduce noise.
This is a winner…well done…. metallic print, perhaps.
aF
I don't think we're there technology wise to create noise free milky way images yet. I haven't seen one yet I don't think. As cameras continue to improve their performance at higher ISO's we'll get there eventually. Again, stellar image in any case!
Viewed here on the white background it's probably hard to tell a difference in this repost, but thanks for the good feedback!
You know I'm not as a rule a huge fan of these night shots they can get a bit overwhelming but I have to say this one is one of the strongest I have seen on here. A really really good effort with an exceptionally fine balance that feels like a window on the night.
Ed
Gary.
--P