This is a composite of four photos. Three for the sky to reduce noise and one for the lava field so it wasn't pitch black.
One of the secrets to the success of this picture is the sky is truly dark. The bortle scale is 2 which is getting rarer to find these days.
The sky exposures were 6 seconds at f/2.8 with ISO 3200. I tried another bracket of three exposures which were 25 seconds but finally went with these. The benefit was sharper stars which were easier to realign between the three shots. The drawback was more low frequency noise due to the underexposure. Low frequency noise is hard to remove.
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Place: 7 out of 360 Avg (all users): 6.8264 Avg (commenters): 8.3333 Avg (participants): 6.7660 Avg (non-participants): 7.0370 Views since voting: 3382 Views during voting: 244 Votes: 121 Comments: 19 Favorites: 12 (view)
The sky looks so magical. It's crazy that so many people have never seen this is real life because they live in a town with more than 10 people who have lights on their houses and streets.
Amazing job given how short your exposures were. Nice job in post to maximize your return on the investment of seconds. I'd love to see how this holds up at full res for larger prints. Nice work Doc!
I've tried night shots before and I've no idea how to capture milky way like you did. Would love to see the exif. Good foreground intrigue as well. Hope to see this in top 10.
Holy Cow!!!!! What a fantastic night sky. Exceptional. I'm not as wild about the ground (very eerie gray tones) but I understand that it's the nature of HDR. Pretty amazing.
Well, that can only be one place; Dee Wright Observatory up-top ol' 242. I've driven through there at night years ago, but that was before I was really a photographer so I didn't think of stopping. Actually the last time I was there it was sunny and warm down in the Willamette valley and a blizzard up top. I'll never forget fighting the howling winds to hold the bathroom door closed. Oh, and the freezing updraft on my toosh. Ahh, good times.
I don't recall seeing any lights mounted in the observatory, so I assume you popped a flash or lantern of some sort in there? That was a nice touch. Other than the blizzard day every time I've been there it's been perfectly blue skies. Nice, but very boring to photograph. A night shot was a great idea.
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