Taken from Glacier Point at about 10 pm. It was too dark so I couldn't see anything in the viewfinder to compose or focus, it was trial and error to get it. There were a lot of planes that I had to wait to pass to take a shot, and even in this one there was one that I cropped out. I had a blast doing this. It was incredible being up there alone at night, although I had to force myself not to be spooked being the only person up there with just a little LED headlight on my forehead. -sorry for blabbering, but it was a neat experience.
Anyways, on to the editing:
Adjusted the brightness/contrast in RAW first
In PS: Tweaked the brightness and levels some more
USM
NeatImage to remove some ISO noise
Cropped
Added border
Save for Web
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Place: 45 out of 373 Avg (all users): 5.8257 Avg (commenters): 7.3750 Avg (participants): 5.6061 Avg (non-participants): 5.9942 Views since voting: 1274 Views during voting: 424 Votes: 304 Comments: 20 Favorites: 0
This is what I'm talking about! I love a story like that and it gets lost in the 5.8 score. Nice shot. It's too bad the star trails were the size they were. it's probably what hurt the shot as they are too short and look more like blur than trails. A 5 minute exposure probably would have made this a winning shot!
Thanks Doc! I totally agree, the stars were not enough to be trails, yet too much to be plain old stars. Just somewhere in limbo between the two.
This is what I'm talking about! I love a story like that and it gets lost in the 5.8 score. Nice shot. It's too bad the star trails were the size they were. it's probably what hurt the shot as they are too short and look more like blur than trails. A 5 minute exposure probably would have made this a winning shot!
This was really fun to do, and really beautiful up there at night. I now have an excuse to make another trip to Yosemite and try it with a full moon. Here's the darker version before PS editing, I should have just used this:
Lovely shot. I wonder how it would have been if you'd taken a longer time exposure to get more circular action out of those stars. Not a criticism, just a thought.
The relatively short exposure for this kind of shot has resulted in very short star trails, and could be mistaken by some as motion blur (which is obviously not the case because the rocks are nice and sharp). If possible, I would suggest either a longer exposure to make the star trails appear more deliberate or shorter to make them appear closer to points. Other than that, I really like the shot with a lovely 'National Geographic' feel to it. Well done.
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