Blue Sky at Night

chrismoore

Spent a couple of days of my Oregon trip in the Three Sisters Wilderness, where there was no shortage of material, but the cloudless skies made my hopes for epic light at sunrise and sunset fade. If there is one thing a clear sky is good for, it is milky way shots, especially at new moon. This was shot at about 4am, which meant the impending rise of the sun behind me was enough to give some light to the mountain at this long of an exposure. I shot the sky at f2.8, 3200, 30 seconds, the water at same settings but 60 seconds, and the mountain about 30 minutes later when it was a little brighter at ISO 1000 for less noise, and manually blended. I intentionally white balanced cool because it was cold out there! Other than that the processing was some selective contrast and brightness adjustments. Thanks for looking!

hawkeye978

Great shot(s) Chris. Love the detail you got in the Milky Way. What lens were you using? I'm seeing almost no streaking in the stars so it must have been fairly short with the 30 second exposure.

chrismoore

Thanks, Tom. I was using the Nikon 14-24 mounted on my 5DII. At 14mm there are no streaks at those settings. I did crop it some.

squirl033

impressive, to say the least! excellent composition and processing. i'm a bit surprised the full moon didn't wash out the stars more...

chrismoore

Thanks Rocky, my mistake, it should have read "new moon." You're right, no way that would have happened with full moon, I fixed it

chrismoore

Here is the sister shot, taken a few moments later and down where the stream exits the moraine. Not as strong IMO, but at the time both comps were equally tempting!

byoshi

both are great, nice images!

fibredrive

stunning images! must have been freezing cold?

hawkeye978

I do like the first one better. My eye gets stuck on the waterfall in the second because it's a little brighter than the mountain but the rocks are darker. But that could be the uncalibrated monitor I'm on now as far as the foreground rocks.

chrismoore

Not too cold, in the 30s when that was shot...
Thanks, Tom. In looking at the image again I did keep the water a little to bright compared with the background. I burned this area a bit and updated the file. Thanks for pointing that out.

TreyHoff

Great image....very magical. That's a lot of stars!