Gregg B. wrote:
Honestly? No this image has some problems. The Milky Way looks artificially added. The mountains are brighter than the sky, where is that light coming from? Did you select mountains and adjust your sky only? It looks like the image is a combination of two separate shots. But the peaks in the distance are far too bright, and they don't match the light in the sky, nor it's their color. The more in the distance you look, the more it should match the color/light in the sky. This image is artificially made or badly processed. So this is the honest criticism from me. If you didn't manipulate your sky it would've been a nice shot. Also, you made your stars pop too much, IMHO. Why? It made the shot so busy, it looks as if it was snowing in space. Also, right next to the horizon line you will have a lot less (almost none) stars. You have tons. That tells me you've substituted the sky and/or moved down the Milky Way to make it align to the mountains. I don't want to be nasty but it does not look good.
No worries man! Appreciate the criticism. I rarely do Milky Way photography (This is my 4th outing) and really only did it because it was my only chance to shoot that whole week due to it being a family vacation. So, the tips are helpful.
I lowered the sky a bit to remove the tree I did when I did the star tracking. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a composition I liked when I took this star tracking shot, so I moved and took my foreground shot to a thousand feet or so right. So, there was a tree that I needed to eliminate from the shot which (with my limited photoshop experience) could only drop it lower to get rid of it as I didn't know another way around it.
The light on the foreground (Half Dome and mountains) was also in the original shot, but that's because I did a 591 second exposure for the foreground. But, I think I also might've added some blur and reduced the contrast to the mountains farther back to make Half Dome a bit more prominent and make the valleys and mountains feel more distant.
I'll learn the more I do this, for sure. If I wouldn't have posted this shot, however, I wouldn't have gotten the tips you gave. I appreciate the comment.
Jun 23, 2020 at 10:50 PM
Previous versions of Fouve's message #15262812 « Got to visit Yosemite last week! »
