Critique wanted Completed light painted Aurora at Bell's Beach, Victoria

[Chavezshutter]

Location

Australia

Camera type

Mirrorless camera

Camera sensor

Full-frame

EXIF

4 photos stacked in Sequator - ISO 2500, F/2.8, 15 seconds, 4 photos foreground and light painting - ISO 2500, F/4.5, 10 seconds. Composited in Photoshop and final edit in Lightroom

Hi😁 ,

I have been kept busy completing this composite. I had already posted what I thought would be my base star image in another thread but as Andy Smith pointed out, I had a little coma in my stars near the bottom right of the frame, so I found another set of frames to create another Sequator stack, this stack still has some coma but its less than my first stack. I am under the 500 rule by 5 (10 apparently) seconds so the coma effect is a little strange 😕 but anyways, let's continue.

Foolishly, I later changed my settings while shooting and that meant that when I shot my dark frames they did not match amd couldnt be used in the stacking - had to manually try to clean hot pixels, which took some time. The foreground and rocks were painted from 4 photos and I had the choice to use any of the 4 foregrounds for this final edit, I picked the foreground which gave me some faint leading lines, which I then enhanced using dodge and burn. The other advantage of this technique is being able to control the light painted light individually in each layer by using layer opacity in Photoshop. I wanted to light the rock on the right edge a little more but it was drawing the eye away too much and I decided to keep it darker. I hope you like it..

 

[TMG1961]

I like the image. But you lost me completely during the explanation of what you did do. For me this is all some kind of magic.

 

[Andy Smith]

The foreground looks great Chavezshutter, the light painting on the rocks is really nice, and I think you made the right choice keeping the right hand side rocks little darker. The waves add a real sweet touch also.
Very nicely done.

 

[oscar118]

Spectacular! Just a suggestion, have you tried darkening the sand in the foreground a little? I feel it a little distracting

 

[Chavezshutter]

I like the image. But you lost me completely during the explanation of what you did do. For me this is all some kind of magic.

There are a few things going on but I will try to explain it:

There are a few concepts to keep in mind when shooting stars even with a single photo, the biggest one is star trailing, this is when instead of a sharp star, you begin to get coma like stars and with longer shutters they turn into star trails, this effect occurs because the stars move across the sky as earth spins and the "rule" used to avoid this is called the 500 rule which is simply 500 divided by focal length - In my case 500/20(mm) = 25 seconds. This is most amount of shutter time I want to use before star trailing starts to look noticeable. I used 15 seconds in my shots which is why I was somewhat confused about having some coma in my shots, but moving on, now that you have the idea of the 500 rule is we can talk about the editing.

The first part is the stacking of the stars using Sequator, I wont go into too much detail into what it involved as I plan to do a write up about this free software for the forum. Suffice to say I used 4 consecutively taken star shots and stacked them to create the background/stars. The software aligns the stars in the output image (and does some other stuff I wont elaborate here), taking care of the moving star issue between each frame, if you already have trailing in your shot from not following the 500 rule, then you need to reshoot or try to edit a star trail shot instead of sharp stars . The end result of the first version of this Sequator process was posted earlier in my other aurora post.

The next part is trickier to understand, perhaps if I show you the photos I used to create the final image you might get a better idea:


I took my Sequator stacked stars and the 4 photos above into Photoshop and used sections of each photo to create the final image (this is called a composite). My foreground was taken from the second photo and for the lighpainted rocks I "painted" in light from each photo into my final image. The amount of light taken from each photo can be adjusted before, during and after the painting. Once I was happy with the result a little cleanup here and there and a final edit in Lightroom. Hope that clears it up a little. I remember when I started to play with Photoshop and it was all some type of magic😆. I use mostly Lightroom for editing but I pull out the old Photoshop skills for a composite like this Aurora photo. Putting even just 2 photos together is very useful and powerfull, worth learning in my opinion.

 

[TMG1961]

There are a few things going on but I will try to explain it:

There are a few concepts to keep in mind when shooting stars even with a single photo, the biggest one is star trailing, this is when instead of a sharp star, you begin to get coma like stars and with longer shutters they turn into star trails, this effect occurs because the stars move across the sky as earth spins and the "rule" used to avoid this is called the 500 rule which is simply 500 divided focal length - In my case 500/20(mm) = 25 seconds. This is most amount of shutter time I want to use before star trailing starts to look noticeable. I used 15 seconds in my shots which is why I was somewhat confused about having some coma in my shots, but moving on, now that you have the idea of the 500 rule is we can talk about the editing.

The first part is the stacking of the stars using Sequator, I wont go into too much detail into what it involved as I plan to do a write up about this free software for the forum. Suffice to say I used 4 consecutively taken star shots and stacked them to create the background/stars. The software aligns the stars in the output image (and does some other stuff I wont elaborate here), taking care of the moving star issue between each frame, if you already have trailing in your shot from not following the 500 rule, then you need to reshoot or try to edit a star trail shot instead of sharp stars . The end result of the first version of this Sequator process was posted earlier in my other aurora post.

The next part is trickier to understand, perhaps if I show you the photos I used to create the final image you might get a better idea:

View attachment 222View attachment 223View attachment 224View attachment 225
I took my Sequator stacked stars and the 4 photos above into Photoshop and used sections of each photo to create the final image (this is called a composite). My foreground was taken from the second photo and for the lighpainted rocks I "painted" in light from each photo into my final image. The amount of light taken from each photo can be adjusted before, during and after the painting. Once I was happy with the result a little cleanup here and there and a final edit in Lightroom. Hope that clears it up a little. I remember when I started to play with Photoshop and it was all some type of magic😆. I use mostly Lightroom for editing but I pull out the old Photoshop skills for a composite like this Aurora photo. Putting even just 2 photos together is very useful and powerfull, worth learning in my opinion.

Thanks for the explanation. My editing skills at the moment don't go much further then using the auto button and then maybe adjusting the sliders a little bit. But that is it. I have no clue what 90% of all the sections in Lightroom or Photoshop do to a photo. So in short my editing skills are just very very basic. I tried to learn more about it but it just doesn't get embedded in the old brain anymore

 

[Chavezshutter]

Thanks for the explanation. My editing skills at the moment don't go much further then using the auto button and then maybe adjusting the sliders a little bit. But that is it. I have no clue what 90% of all the sections in Lightroom or Photoshop do to a photo. So in short my editing skills are just very very basic. I tried to learn more about it but it just doesn't get embedded in the old brain anymore

Concentrate on Lightroom first and leave Photoshop aside for a while. I only use Photoshop for image manipulation like the composite in this thread, putting together a focus stack or some other specific similar technique. I think its more valuable to know how to edit a photo than to play around with composites and while you can edit in Photoshop its a much complex and technical program. The road to editing is as long and difficult as photography, it all takes time and practice.

 

[TMG1961]

I don't use photoshop a lot. 99% of my editing takes place in lightroom, but like i said it is all very basic and very limited.

 

[panos_adgr]

Very nice photo C Chavezshutter ! I like it and I find star photography rather interesting especially if the foreground is nice and dynamic.
Nice is also the explanation of your work.
I find it very interesting, to read the thoughts or intentions behind a photo.

 

[Chavezshutter]

Very nice photo C Chavezshutter ! I like it and I find star photography rather interesting especially if the foreground is nice and dynamic.
Nice is also the explanation of your work.
I find it very interesting, to read the thoughts or intentions behind a photo.

Thank you very much panos_adgr, glad you like it 😀