This shot encompasses the Lowell Observatory rotunda and Mars (the bright 'star' in the gap between trees just right of center) during an evening observing program. The dome is softly lit by the cool light of a nearly full moon.
I did need to crop unfortunately, because the angle of the shot lead to an exaggerated vertical perspective effect that people tend to find unsettling. So I corrected for that perspective using the skew tool in Photoshop to make the architecture and trees appear to all be parallel and vertical. This made for a trapezoid shaped image that needed to be cropped back to a rectangle. Since the details said "you should avoid cropping", I took that to mean that cropping, while discouraged, was not prohibited. I believe it was justified in this instance, for the reasons stated. (I could certainly be wrong. Very wrong. I suppose I'll find out.)
Curves were applied to adjust contrast and color. Neat image was used to sharpen details and smooth out noise. Some selective masking was used to keep the dome close to neutral in color. Some dodging was done around the telescope to help pop it from the background. Some minor cloning was done to remove a couple obnoxious hot pixels.
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wow, those people are really grainy and a little soft from movement. I love the sky, but you also have fringy's around your trees where you changed the exposure. still a very nice image.
This is a beautiful image.. I kind of wish you had stepped back and maybe to the left just a tad to get the viewers' feet in the image and perhaps fill the space with just a tad more of the observatory... but that's not too big of a deal. Really great job with exposure and difficult lighting. Very nice. Good luck.
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