Earlier in the day, I photographed this exact same scene (and created an HDR version of it). At that time, there was heavy cloud cover with no end in sight. But around dusk the clouds started to move out, and I knew my window for this challenge had opened. I liked this scene so much, that I figured it would be good for at least a try (plus it's pretty close to my house).
This location is about 150 meters off the road, and that road is lined with street lights. Those street lights made it possible to navigate my way without a flashlight, and also provided the light to be gathered by the sensor. So I took a number of photos, adjusting the ISO, aperture, and exposure time until I got one I liked.
Post Processing:
* Straighten
* White Balance
* Increase exposure
* De-vignette
* Topaz DeNoise
* Topaz Adjust
* Increase Black Point
* Increase Definition
* Increase Saturation with higher Vibrancy
* S-curve
* Levels
* Painted blues and purples out of the land (to remove color cast in the snow)
* Export to TIFF
* Resize to 800px
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEG
Statistics
Place: 6 out of 39 Avg (all users): 6.7673 Avg (commenters): 8.2727 Avg (participants): 6.6190 Avg (non-participants): 6.7899 Views since voting: 2919 Views during voting: 457 Votes: 159 Comments: 16 Favorites: 0
My favorite. Color is so vibrant and detail so good it does look like a photo taken during the day. Star trail and house lights give away the night shot. Beautiful photo...
Well this is one of the best examples of professional management of exposure. Probably the best. Sharp, noiseless, detail, texture, trees vs. a starry sky. How?! Superb.
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