Moon Shadows - a photo on Flickriver

Moon Shadows

This is an experiment. What do you think? The common wisdom is that it is hard to get good Milky Way photos with a bright moon present. We were on vacation in Australia along the NE coast near Cairns and along the part of the ocean known as the Coral Sea. The vacation was not planned as a photography trip (the words tripod and vacation are not used kindly in the same sentence by my wife) and at the time the moon was up most of the night. The moon was about 3/4 full. When I realized just how little light pollution there was in this area I wanted to try some night photos, moon or no moon. This is the result The moon is behind me to the right, so I am facing away from the moon towards the darker part of the sky. The moonlight illuminates the beach wonderfully, even creating shadows from the trees. With the moonlight present the sky came out very, very blue, reminding me of "blue hour" photos. I had to desaturate the blues in the sky to make it look more natural. It was also much brighter than usual along the horizon, so you lose the Milky Way there. There is some movement in the tree branches from wind.

Anyway..., I had read that to get better Milky Way photos in a light polluted area you should "shoot to the right", or expose the image so the bulk of the curve (or data) was to the right side of the histogram. Typically the peak of the curve in a dark sky photo is to the left of the histogram (dark side). These were exposed so the sky came out very light in the image, and then the image was later darkened. So what do you think? The foreground is much better than usual, and the Milky Way a little less detailed than usual. There is some loss of color in the MW. Anyway I thought the result was interesting.

This is a panorama of 1o vertical images combined in Photoshop. The individual photos were were taken with a Canon 6D camera, Canon 16-35 mm lens at 16 mm, f 3.2, 15 sec exposures, and ISO 6400.

Hope you enjoy! Thanks in advance for taking the time to look and comment.

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Taken in: Australia / Queensland / Oak Beach (show map)

Taken on: April 29, 2015

Tags:

australia

cairns

night

night sky

night photography

milky way

star

stars

moonlight

moon

galaxy

wayne pinkston

lightcrafter

www.lightcrafter.com

astrophotography

landscape astrophotography

canon

canon 6D « less

Sets appears in: • MW & Night Landscapes

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Camera: Canon EOS 6D, f/3.2, 15 sec, 16mm, ISO 6400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 6D
Lens:	EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
Aperture:	f/3.2
Exposure Time:	15
Focal Length:	16mm
ISO:	6400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CC (Macintosh)
Show full info

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