Selections made to distinguish sky from foreground, then curves, dodge & burn, and channel blending used to balance color, and even out exposure between foreground and sky to better convey the naked eye view. Unsharp mask used. Border added.
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Thank you for all the valuable input. I did worry about that vertical perspective making the observatory, trees and other building appear to be leaning toward center. Part of me liked the way it looked like everything was reaching for the stars, but it also tempted to be distracting.
KDO, the bulk of the foreground lighting in the image came from moonlight that was giving a beautiful glow to the whole facility. I had to use masks to separate the sky from the foreground to boost the contrast enough to give the impression of what I could see in the sky, at the same time the moon was bathing everything else. Based on some good comments here, I probably opened things up a bit too much. I worry sometimes that I make my images too dark...so I think I overcompensated.
returning for comments:
Time exposures do add trails to the stars/ There are so many that they look like snow. It seems that the sky should be a little darker to add more realism, but the image has enough merit as is. Bumping up.
Some odd perspective distortion has crept in here, presumably from your angle of shooting (else the US naval observatory has been built on the slant, which seems unlikely). Like the ceanliness of the long exposure - not easy to achieve and must have taken care. I think I'd have wanted to calm the brightness of the snow in post-processing - I think that loses some of the impact of the 'night' element of this shot: there isn't enough dark in this to speak of that.
This is stunning. Top notch shot. I am eager to read about your post-processing techniques. How did you get this amazing "starlit" quality? It is brilliant.
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