Dock by Moonlight

[j-digg]

This was my first try at shooting multiple exposures at night with the moon in the frame and blending them later... Im wondering if theres a good way to get decent color in the sky ( similar to what I have here ) without having huge amounts of flare, so pasting in a properly exposed moon would look right... Luckily I was able to make it look OK... but it was by using terrible methods and I would like to learn a better way.

Other than that any general C&C is appreciated.

I think I mightve pasted the moon a tad too far to the right... judging by the reflection and the closest shadows on the dock. The farther away shadows are effected by streetlights that run the length of the lake to the left which is why they appear more lateral in the frame.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4114/4788701208_cc04185e42.jpg

 

[misskrys]

I think it looks pretty good :thumbup: The right side's a little dark, though.

 

[j-digg]

I think it looks pretty good :thumbup: The right side's a little dark, though.

Yeah I was sortve wondering that too... I can never seem to get the brightness / exposure where I want it to be at on my laptop

 

[AlexL]

i thought this is a pretty attractive shot!

 

[MohaimenK]

I like your shot. It was nicely done. How long was the exposure for this shot? It came out nice btw? I think a little more exposure would have been nice to bring the right side more. Of course, not the same as taking the real thing, I did however did a little PP. Hope you like them.

 

[j-digg]

I like your shot. It was nicely done. How long was the exposure for this shot? It came out nice btw? I think a little more exposure would have been nice to bring the right side more. Of course, not the same as taking the real thing, I did however did a little PP. Hope you like them.

It definitely made the dock area a bit more lively what did you all? Or was it just a brightness adjustment, I noticed the moon is starting to get lost in the B&W version... but thats easily taken care of.

I believe the main exposure was somewhere around ISO 400, 7.1 for 30 seconds... The reason being is that my cheapo cable release was acting up and finally it just stopped holding in Bulb altogether.. So I had to get the exposure down to 30 seconds somehow... Man I was ticked off... Oh well, time to get a nice intervalometer

 

[MohaimenK]

I changed the exposure of the first photo under photoshop and bumped it up 1.6. I noticed later the moon was just a white dot. So I ende dup cropping the moon out and did that seperately. For the B&W I just converted it to BW of the processed image. I wish I had a little more time but it all took about 3 mins. But yeah if you play w/ photoshop, you can do wonders.

 

[MohaimenK]

Oh and another thing, for night shots, they said to drop down the ISO as low as possible. But keeping it around 100 would be fine.

 

[j-digg]

Oh and another thing, for night shots, they said to drop down the ISO as low as possible. But keeping it around 100 would be fine.

Yeah, it mayve got sorta "lost" in my post above, but I couldnt shoot Bulb anymore cuz my cable release broke, therefore I had to up the ISO to get a 30 second exposure @ 7.1. :S sorta sucks, but it was really the only option at that point.

 

[IceEateer]

Nice Shot! If only the photo composition had lines of the bridge pointing to the moon. I guess you can't very well control the moon, or can you?

 

[j-digg]

Nice Shot! If only the photo composition had lines of the bridge pointing to the moon. I guess you can't very well control the moon, or can you?

Now just to get that reflection in the right spot

 

[IceEateer]

Now just to get that reflection in the right spot

Lol! What reflection?

 

[gwenwon]

The color is too warm to me. I prefer some cooler color so that the picture would have a feeling of "moonlight". And I don't think it a good idea to move the moon, because you have shadows clearly in your picture.

 

[j-digg]

The color is too warm to me. I prefer some cooler color so that the picture would have a feeling of "moonlight". And I don't think it a good idea to move the moon, because you have shadows clearly in your picture.

Yep, that was the next thing I was going to mess around with... the color temp came from all of the super orange street lights around.

 

[j-digg]

Hmm I tried cooling it down a bit, but it looked sortve odd IMO, because it was really orange in some spots.. so Id have to do a few other things Im sure. :S maybe later tonite.