Cosmic Bouquet

[CapturingTheNight]

Hi all,
Couldn't resist pulling over on the side of the road on my way home one night earlier in the week, to try and capture some of the first wattle blooms of the season under the stars.

"Cosmic Bouquet"
Vertical panorama made from 6 horizontal images.
Canon 5D Mk II
14mm F/2.8
119704
Cheers
Greg

[colinmlegg]

That's a pretty cool image Greg. Love the cloud and window to the Milky Way. Adds some mystery to the shot.

[Vasya Pupkin]

Sometimes clouds help to make a picture more fantasy.

[dvj]

Wow! Just amazing.

[Poita]

Great stuff.
Only suggestion I would make would be to select the bush in the foreground of shot and use curves to reduce the flash blowout on it a bit to balance the image. I had a quick go in photoshop and there is enough range there to be able to do it.

[gregbradley]

Very aesthetic Greg.

Greg.

[iceman]

Nicely done Greg, the clouds add drama to this one!

[strongmanmike]

...anything seems to go with our Milky Way huh? someone do an Aussie BBQ scene...could they? :lol:

Mike

[Ric]

Nice work Greg, a great image.

A BBQ under the milky way, sounds like a good idea Mike.

[multiweb]

Very nice composition. I'm amazed how you've managed to get the milkyway so colourful and bright through the clouds. Did you use any masking/blending between your panels? I looks really good. :thumbsup:

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you very much for the great feedback Colin :D

Thank you :D Yeah I like the clouds in this one.

Thank you John :D

Thank you so much for the honest critique Peter. :D I actually didn't use a flash. I used the light from my mobile phone screen to light up the plants over the course of the long/high ISO exposure. I can see what you mean about the blown highlights dominating the picture. Entirely my fault in post processing. I'll do a repro one day and try to make it better.

Thank you very much Greg :D

Thank you very much Mike :D I'm actually surprised I got that much of the Milky Way through the clouds.

Haha Thanks Mike :D Challenge accepted....

Thank you very much Ric

Thank you so much for the great feedback Marc :D I had to do a bit of blending for the foreground to stop it blowing out too much, but the sky component is just levels adjustments.

[multiweb]

How quick do you shoot your 6 panels to avoid cloud motion in between the shots?

[CapturingTheNight]

6 times 30 seconds. The clouds were not moving much at all this night.

[naskies]

Wow, another stunning effort, Greg! I'm particularly impressed by how rich the Milky Way looks... it often looks washed out with the combined foreground shots, but not here.

[White Rabbit]

Yeah the clouds look amazing well done.

[multiweb]

Cool - must have been very still indeed.

[Setae]

That is stunning.

Thank you for sharing.

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you very much everyone :D I'm glad you like it.

[ourkind]

Simply Stunning! Amazing what a little spontanuity can achieve!