Took this photo on the 12th July and have been working hard on it since. It's a panoramic of 6 images which had to be manually stitched due to the low number of high contrast features for auto stitching.
Taken before dawn it shows the early morning planets Jupiter and Venus with a raft of other night sky objects:
The 2000px shot on the blog is higher JPG quality and larger than the attached but depending on your screen site you won't be able to see the full size, so depends.
I really like the result, particularly the colours and sharp silhouettes. I'm thinking of doing myself a large print of it, I think it'd look great on a glossy aluminium mount and there's enough resolution to do a 1.5m print at 100% without even starting to increase its size above 100%.
The shot is a culmination of planning to use the site for a while and monitoring when fog is in the suitable position and not. I was also quite particular about wanting the moon out of frame and behind/above to illuminate the fog nicely. So after the planning I'm glad to have a result which works. Of course there's always room for improvement and for me to wish I'd got a better shot one way or another....
Beautiful result, Roger!
Looks like there's an internal reflection of Venus at the bottom of the frame - I'd clone that out.
Nice work!
Thanks Mike
It's a street light shining through the fog actually. I did try cloning it out, but couldn't achieve a smooth enough clone that it didn't look "patched". The shading is so subtle I just found it impossible to remove.
It is distracting but I also wondered if it's good to show there's something below the fog. If I could remove it I probably would. Might give it another try later..
I have added a second photograph to the blog post, attached here too. In this one I have managed to remove the light shining through the fog and while I can still see the error myself it was much easier to remove than in the panoramic.
Nice one Roger. Looks like a nice spot for a timelapse as well. Is fog pretty common there in winter? In the hills?
Fog is quite common there, because of the valley and weir. It can be tough to be above the fog, that's the only problem. The lookout is not on the top of a hill but the side of the valley, so it would be common for the lookout to be engulfed in fog too, from what I have seen. But almost every morning during winter there will be fog in the valley. On this occasion there wasn't any significant fog elsewhere in the metro area that I saw/was aware of but it was still heavy in this valley.
Nice image Roger, I liked the original,as it showed that there was a connection between earth and sky.
Once you have seen the original, your eyes make you think some thing is missing
It goes to show that if you can remove objects, so you can add, which to me in digital imaging is one of its detractions.
What is real and what is not
Cheers
Nice image Roger, I liked the original,as it showed that there was a connection between earth and sky.
Once you have seen the original, your eyes make you think some thing is missing
It goes to show that if you can remove objects, so you can add, which to me in digital imaging is one of its detractions.
What is real and what is not
Cheers
Yeah it's an interesting one isn't it. Where to stop the digital editing.
In this case I honestly can't decide which I prefer. I like the thought that there's something below the mist but I find the light a bit distracting. Maybe that means it really doesn't make or break the image so default should be to leave it as was with the image more "true".
I recently did some photography courses and other such things where I've had interactions with pro landscape and portrait photographers. It was very clear that the pro's were much more adventurous in their digital editing than my more "keep it true" approach. It surprised me, made me think I hadn't moved with the times.
I did intend to leave the two here for comparison but seems my new one has replaced the old. I'll see if I can put both back in the original post.
The panoramic is a 6 frame mosaic. Each frame is 10 seconds at ISO 2000, F/4. Canon 7D. Fixed tripod. Canon 17-40 F/4L lens @ 17mm. The conditions were changing quick so I only had time for one pass at the mosaic, so no stacking is involved.
The panoramic is stitched manually in PTGui, manually as in I chose manual alignment points between all 6 frames because the fog etc made it too hard for PTGui or PhotoShop to automatically align the frames.
Hi Roger!
Well wicked shot!
I was itching to get out to take a shot similar to that ( but without the planning.....). I was doing graveyard shift that morning and was hoping that I could get out earlier to do some shots at Bells Rapids...as it is close to my work. Had all the hope that I could get the Avon, Hills, Fog and Sky all in the same shot......to no avail, cause I finished at 7:30 .....sun up etc...
The fog was as thick as soup that morning!
Here is just a quick snap....
Cheers
Bartman
Early morning planets & sky with fog panorama
, editing is so-so.
I liked the original,as it showed that there was a connection between earth and sky.
