New here, one of my first night shots

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tidalwdave
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p.1 #1 · New here, one of my first night shots

I finally decided to get the courage up to post here. Figured I was in the small ponds and want to join the big fish. This is one of my first attempts at night time and B&W photography. Dry Falls NC taken a few weeks ago. Thoughts?

2013 © tidalwdave

Dry Falls, NC

Feb 06, 2013 at 02:45 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #2 · New here, one of my first night shots

Hi Dave,

Welcome to FM Landscape!

You sure picked a pretty creative shot to post first. Overall, these shots are pretty complicated, so nice work on this. When light painting a scene, that's where it really can be tricky. So I do like the overall look of the stars, the moon, the water. The only place this shot could use improvement would be to have had not quite so much light on the trees and leaves. Perhaps using a layermask to just underexpose the ground layer would work. How did you light up the ground?

Again, overall, very well done here.

Jim

Feb 06, 2013 at 02:51 AM

tidalwdave
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p.1 #3 · New here, one of my first night shots

Thanks Jim. I had a pretty wide LED flashlight to get to the falls about 200 feet away. I did want to get some foreground though. I'm not that great with Photoshop yet, I have CS2 and LR4. Still learning. This is pretty raw, only converted to B&W. There was barely any wind and it was 20 degrees. I had some shot with my breath mist in them, so those wouldn't work. What little wind I had blew my mist into the shot/light painting.

Feb 06, 2013 at 03:26 AM

John Richter
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p.1 #4 · New here, one of my first night shots

I, too, like the subject matter, Dave. Nice choice for a first post.

I agree with Jim about the foreground being too bright. LR4 has a graduated filter that may come in handy and it's easy to use.

Looking forward to more posts.

JBR

Feb 06, 2013 at 06:29 AM

kwilliam8
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p.1 #5 · New here, one of my first night shots

Dave, this has the makings of a really nice image. Keep at it. And post some more on this forum!
Keith W.

Feb 06, 2013 at 09:09 AM

astro-ep
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p.1 #6 · New here, one of my first night shots

Nice one, Dave. I agree with the others, regarding the foreground. There are many ways to handle this in Photoshop. It's also easy to blend in parts of lighter exposed images using masks. That's where I started in Photoshop, for my astrophotos. You'll get a lot of mileage learning to use masks.

Welcome and I'm looking forward to seeing more

Eric

Feb 06, 2013 at 06:12 PM

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