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Small Town; Big Sky
Small Town; Big Sky
dsidwell


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Night Shot II (Advanced Editing II)
Collection: Landscapes
Camera: Sony DSC-F828
Location: Benson, Utah USA
Date: Oct 12, 2004
Aperture: f 2.0
ISO: 100
Shutter: 30 sec.
Galleries: Cityscape, Emotive
Date Uploaded: Oct 14, 2004

 This took a bit of work, mostly to clean up, since my BRAND NEW CAMERA (yay!!!!) gets a bit noisy at night.

First of all, this was taken at a nearby marina, looking north. The small town across the lake is, I believe, Newton, Utah. All of those stars really were there, and this is the sky we see in our little apline valley. Sometimes we do get some smog, but not on this night, thank goodness! You folks from the city are always welcome to come and visit and gawk at the stars when you come.

Steps:

I first skewed the image, since my wide angle lens (almost a fisheye) warped it considerably. I selected about a third of each side, and skewed it down so the horizon was straighter.

It was dark, so I lightened it. There was way too much noise with any ISO over 100, so it did appear darker, and as I shot, I fully expected to be lightening and cleaning a lot.

I next created three new layers: Ground, Sky and Stars. On each later, I eliminated everything but the subject for which it was titled.

In the Stars layer, which only had stars, I increased their brightness a little by using Levels and sliding the right slider to the left. I also selected the Big Dipper and Polaris, and repeated the process, making them slightly brighter.

In the Sky layer, it was mostly cleaning and smoothing. I also shifted the colors so it was a bit more blue and more like it was when I saw it.

The Ground layer, which included the lake, was all strangely colored, mostly due to an obnoxious orange street light in the marina parking lot behing me. It gave the lake itself a bizarre, ugly, orangey brown color. So I selected the water and color shifted it toward the blue, then desaturated it until it looked good with the sky. This was my most digitally questionable thing I did, but quite frankly, the water was just plain ugly and the camera picked it up strangely.

The lights of the small town appeared weird, so I moved them down with the clone tool a tad. This also may be considered too digitally manipulative, but I feel it vastly improved the image. My wife encouraged me to eliminate the town lights altogether, but I felt that this action would be going to far, so I opted to simply shift them down. After all, when I shot the photo, I wanted to create an image with the town and its sky as subject. A fair compromise, I hope.

I flattened the layers, fixed a few other minor problems, and resized, then sharpened, which to my surprise doubled the number of stars in the sky, and brought out their fun colors.

Enjoy!

Statistics
Place: 26 out of 182
Avg (all users): 6.3106
Avg (commenters): 8.3158
Avg (participants): 6.0531
Avg (non-participants): 6.5492
Views since voting: 1660
Views during voting: 422
Votes: 235
Comments: 22
Favorites: 5 (view)

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AuthorThread
Nikon D80
 01/16/2005 04:05:25 PM
After reading your comments it would be interesting to see the original. :)
 Comments Made During the Challenge
Nikon D70
Sigma 100-300mm f/4.0 EX IF HSM for Nikon
 10/24/2004 11:54:38 PM
I'd bet you are getting comments that the starts are drawn in ps =) Very nice.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D700
Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
 10/24/2004 11:51:42 PM
splendidly simple !! 8
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Panasonic DMC-FZ7
 10/24/2004 09:27:10 PM
Love this shot!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Fujifilm X-T5
Fujifilm XF 23mm f/2 R WR
 10/24/2004 09:00:15 PM
Very unusual image. Almost airbrush work. I like it a lot. Well done.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM II
 10/24/2004 08:13:00 PM
Really cool photo, I love the vastness of the scene...
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-10D
Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 DC for Canon
 10/24/2004 08:00:55 PM
simple, lovely. A nice way to connect the sky to the ground while still giving the viewer a sense of the vastness of the universe
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-20D
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
 10/23/2004 04:40:35 PM
returning for comments
A rather impressionistic image with soothing slice of earth across the firmament.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Sony DSC-F717
 10/23/2004 07:43:27 AM
What a beautiful photo. Stars are so awesome and bright.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM
 10/22/2004 09:13:44 PM
My favorite in the challenge -10- BOL
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark III
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
 10/22/2004 09:42:34 AM
Wonderful Shot in my top 5 of the challenge!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM
 10/22/2004 08:13:54 AM
I love thoose stars This is amazing :D 10
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II
Carl Zeiss 50mm ZF f/2.0 Makro-Planar T
 10/20/2004 07:17:50 PM
This photo reminds me of the cover/poster of the film "Mystic River". Great photo.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Minolta DiMAGE F200
 10/19/2004 11:23:45 PM
I like the expanse of huge starry sky. There is a nice tension between the sky and the landscape at the bottom half of the frame. This almost looks like a book illustration rather than a photograph. Very nice.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-300D Rebel
Sigma 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 Aspherical HF for Canon
 10/19/2004 11:22:55 PM
I like it. Big Dipper right in the center.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D70
 10/19/2004 08:16:20 AM
Nice job. I'd hang this on my wall...
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Sony DSC-P100
 10/19/2004 05:19:09 AM
Good job... its not wow but there is something in it.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Olympus C-740UZ
 10/19/2004 04:54:32 AM
The simplicity of the shot is fantastic. It almost seem fake.
I would try less compression for the jpg file to make the sky smooth, but I wouldn't degrade the pic because of that.
Well done
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-550D Rebel T2i
Sigma 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM
 10/19/2004 03:11:10 AM
Excellent photo, I love th sky.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
 10/19/2004 12:18:09 AM
This is just exquisite. I LOVE it. The only thing I would change is to maybe clone out the town lights, then I'll buy a print of it. : )
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-20D
Tamron SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 Di II LD Aspherical (IF) for Canon
 10/18/2004 02:10:44 PM
Very nice balance in a very low key shot! Gradiance on the horizon looks perfect, a truly optimal expose (lights not blown out, details showing). I bet there are a bunch of people willing to pay for this (would look great on your wall or could sell as an stock photo). Different from your typical DPC shot, I love it.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D700
Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR
 10/18/2004 01:19:15 AM
Beautiful.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
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