Starry Skies
by lemondster

Comment:
exposing the image more would draw out the stars (I had to look really close) and make me rate this higher. I think it could use another two stops of exposure at least, quadrupling your exposure time.

Late night Traffic
by Mazer

Comment:
nice capture; nice job with the white balancing

Little Red Bridge
by zenelf

Comment:
color cast is too orange for my taste. white balancing it to near-correct would make a better picture IMO.

Southern Cross
by storyteller

Comment:
dragging these out into star trails over several minutes would make a more interesting shot.

night deals
by messerschmitt

Comment:
I would score it higher if the white balancing was closer to correct

Archdiocese of St. Paul
by Gatorguy

Comment:
hey, I know that place... :)

Hope - that I can find my way back out...
by krazy

Comment:
Here you go. He wears the headlamp around his neck with his collar, and it shines down beneath his chin.

Hope - that I can find my way back out...
by krazy

Comment:
Wow! I wasn't expecting this photo to do so well.

To answer a few questions right off, the location is an abandoned silica mine somewhere in the midwest area of the US (sorry, I need to be vague to protect it from vandals). The mine has about twenty miles of passages that we have been mapping. A usual trip involves about a half dozen people with headlamps, plenty of flashlights, snacks, and water. On this particular trip, our map was fairly complete and we were much more relaxed and able to spend a lot of time at our base camp deep in the mine. The faint foreground lighting (orange) is from a few candles that were lit around base camp behind the camera. They provided enough light for the people in camp to see what they were doing (and not have to use other lights) and just barely enough light for me to have half a prayer of where I was walking out in the view of the camera.

I locked the shutter open with a cable release and walked out into the dark junction room with an off-camera flash. I fired about six flashes from various points around the room, trying to mentally choreograph how the shadows and lighing would look when I was done. Overall, the shutter was open for 49 seconds. The white squiggly line at the bottom of the frame was the dog (more specifically, his headlamp). Mr. Brown was having a blast running around in the dark mine with his own light surce, and me managed to get into several of my shots that weekend. I thought about cropping off the bottom of the frame, but decided not to for the sake of adding a bit more mystery to the photo.

For A Kiss
by Rando D300

Comment:
awww... cute! The contrast from overexposed water to underexposed faces and woods is a tad distracting. Perhaps it would be less of a problem if the subjects were a few feet closer to the camera in the sunlight.

I hope I stick the landing....
by xcharrier

Comment:
Very sharp capture. I think the background would be less distracting of it was blurred more with a larger aperture.