Weathering The Test Of Time

[CapturingTheNight]

Hi all,

'The Rock' is a large outcrop of mainly quartzite that rises 360m above the Riverina plains of southern NSW. It was originally called 'Hanging Rock' by the early settlers, after the large boulder which overhang the eastern face. But when the boulder, well, stopped hanging in 1874 the name of it (and the township near it) was renamed simply 'The Rock'

I have had this shot planned for quite a while but needed to wait for the right moon phase/weather and time of year. Shot this morning at about 2am with the last quarter moon just sneaking above the horizon behind me.

14 image panorama (17,000 pixels wide final image- My computer hates me right now)
Canon 5D Mk II
Canon 50mm F/1.8 lens (plastic fantastic) @ F/2.8
10 second exposures
ISO 3200
Stitched in PTGui Pro and then PS CS3

Hope you like it. As always, any comments or critiques more than welcome.

Cheers

Greg

120469

[RB]

What a gorgeous vista !!
Well done, your patience has paid off.

[iceman]

Nice work Greg, lovely image!

[theodog]

I know that area well.
Very nice image, - a masters eye.:thumbsup:

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you so much Andrew. :D The 1am alarm wasn't ideal but I got my shot.

Cheers Mike :D I'm glad you like it.

Thank you very much Jeff :D I live about 45 minutes away from here.

[strongmanmike]

Gee, has the number of great skyscapes increased since we added a dedicated section on IIS...? Can't remember this many beautiful shots. Glad we did, cause my activity was mostly in deep sky with irregular peeks in Solar System, now this section gets a lot of my attention, thanks to images from guys like you Greg :thumbsup:

Mike

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you so much for that Mike. I really appreciate your support of my work. When are we going to see some Nightscapes from you? :D I know that I was never comfortable posting my nightsky scapes in the Deep Space section so I have quite a few that never saw the light of day here. I know Colin felt the same and held back on a heap of images. But now that Mike and the team were good enough to open up this new section all those images by myself and others can be viewed in the one spot and not buried across the Terrestrial, Solar System and Deep Space forums.

[strongmanmike]

I have only dabbled once so far at IISAC last year (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/skyscapes) ...nothing like yours but I was only tinkering with a brand new and my very first DSLR :P I will do some more once I get down to Canberra I recon.

Love your work :thumbsup:

Mike

[Phil Hart]

hi Greg

great image.. planning (and talented execution) pays off with shots like this. top work.

colour is subjective, so you can and should deal with it however you like. and moonlight will naturally make the sky blue, but on my (dodgy laptop screen) it looks like you may have shifted the white balance a touch (or just increased vibrance/saturation?).

lovely work either way!

Phil

[CapturingTheNight]

They are great shots Mike. A million times better than my first experiments. Can't wait for you to do some more soon. Thanks again mate. :D

Thank you so much for your great feedback and honest critique Phil :D I really appreciate it from you. I must admit that I don't really know how to handle these moonlit sky shots in terms of the blue (still furiously experimenting and learning). I process them exactly the same way as a truly dark sky shot and with the same in camera WB settings. Yes I have increased the saturation slightly so that has certainly made the blue stand out more. I'll have a play with different some different RAW WB settings at some stage to see if I can tone it down a bit, or failing that, I might be able to reduce just the blue channel a bit.
Cheers