Composition, composition, composition ...
Greg, this comment really isn’t aimed at you in particular, but all of us, and especially me. Technically you guys with IQs of 150+ are light years ahead of me with your imaging and I am amazed at your attention to technical details which, perhaps, from the point of view of aesthetics, might not matter as much as we like to believe. At the end of the day, a great image can be technically flawed. More disappointing is when a technically perfect image produced by an elite astro-imager falls short on one essential account: composition. Some imagers argue that “focus, focus, focus” is everything when collecting the raw data. I would argue “composition, composition, composition” is everything at the start of an imaging project which might take up weeks of one’s precious time. I aim to spend the first night experimenting with composition until I find something that is pleasing before I commit to multiple nights of data integration. Finding the right composition is usually easy with a galaxy: center the target on the cross hairs, and this often makes a pleasing composition. However, pleasing composition does not come so easy for a complex nebula. Sorry for my condescending, but hopefully constructive reality check.
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