Blue Night Sky - First picture with XTi

boclcown · Jan 4, 2007

I took this a little after sunset.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=345531454&size=l

Iso: 100
Apature: f9
Shutter: 8"
WB: Auto

I adjusted the colors and such in photoshop to bring out the blue. Is there anything I could have done differently? Does it seem exagurated after photoshop? Is there anything I can do to help composition?
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=345531454&size=l

rmh159 · Jan 4, 2007

No I don't think it's too over-done. It looks like a similar affect you'd get from a graduated ND filter. What technique did you get to acheive the affect?

As with anything there are a million ways to get that look. You can take two exposures, layer them, mask the top one slap a gradiant on it to fade it in/out. I belive you can also add a layer on top of the image and do a clear to black gradiant then adjust the blend option until it looks like that.

boclcown · Jan 4, 2007

I adjusted the levels quite a bit to bring out the sky, which was a bit underexposed to begin with. Other than that, I didn't really do anything special, the picutre came as is out of the camera, with touch-ups but nothing to crazy.

Does anyone know where I can find a good site that can explain levels in photoshop? I've use them frequently, but only experiment to get the result I want. It would be nice to have a thorough explination.

agolf88 · Jan 4, 2007

www.lynda.com is a great site for photoshop tutorials i believe that it is a subscription sit though....and i your photo could be imporved compositionally by having one main focus for the picture perhaps cropping out the houses and leaving just the bball hoop and the tree, i do not feel that the image was overly photoshoped, before I read the details i juts assumed you used a polarized lens.

craig · Jan 5, 2007

I would concentrate on the basketball net and the tree. Some really nice shapes going on.

boclcown · Jan 5, 2007

Would darkening the houses and such to make a silouettet appearance do anything? I'm not sure if it's better to leave some detail in the foreground or to simply shadow it down.