Hantam Star Circles

[Mark Wiseman]

I have just returned from a trip to Addo Elephant National Park, the Tankwa Karoo National Park and the Hantam region of South Africa. I took this image at around 1am in the morning as my last exposure of the evening. The lights of the nearest town, about 25km's away accounts for the red horizon on the right side of the image. I used a zebra lastolite reflector and a flash so light the quiver tree's from the right. The image was processed in ACR and CS5 on a 15" MBP. This image has special significance for me as it is my first star circle image and the drive to the forest was a long one with me driving through mud snow and ice to get to the forest in time. At one stage I travelled 30 miles in 2hours.
Camera Details:
Nikon D4
Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8G AF/S lens
Aperture f2.8
ISO 200
Shutter speed, 2743 seconds.
Manfrotto tripod and FOBA superminiball.

If I were to take the image over again, I would have set the ISO at 100. All comments and crits welcome. :5

[Rachel Hollander]

Mark - Nice to have the mostly full circles. There seems to be some artifacts(?) right at the edge of the hill that might be worth cloning out. I like the faint milky way beyond the star trails. How long did you expose the trees for with the reflected light?

TFS,
Rachel

[Mark Wiseman]

Rachel, those artefacts are quiver trees in the distance. I used a flash, SB-900, the exposure was only two flashes from the right using the Lastolite reflector to enhance the range of the flash.
I will check the right side, but the whole valley floor to the horizon is filled with quiver trees, Aloe dichotoma.
Thanks for commenting and best wishes,
Mark.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hey Mark! I am so glad you posted one of these here (looking forward to more! :5)

Love the image design, and good execution of the trails and FG lighting. I too wondered about the "artifacts"...since they're quivers I would probably leave them, though the image would have a "cleaner" appeal without them, as most would not know what they are and they look like compression artifacts at this size. Might not be an issue at full resolution.

Herewith a repost, in which I addressed the following:

1. WB - too warm for me, especially given the length of your exposure...I like to capture the blues and magenta of nighttime shooting, and therefore set my WB to fluorescent or similarly "cold" WB when shooting like this. I used cooling filters to get to the colours I thought would work well. All IMHO, of course :t3

2. Midtone contrast was lacking - so I punched it up a bit...

3. I darkened the sky some to make the stars pop more.

WDYT??? :e3

PS: I would lose the frame - when you can only post 1024px wide (or smaller) you want to use all the pixels for the image?
PPS: Working on your small JPG has left its mark - as usual, it's always best to adjust from the high res RAW or TIFF

[Mark Wiseman]

Hi Morkel,
I like the repost. You do like taking the mid tone contrast that eeny weeny bit more than me, very nice.
Best wishes and many thanks for the help. I will do a repost later.
Mark.

[Mark Wiseman]

This is a repost following Morkel's. I have darkened the night sky and added more mid tone contrast and the image below is probably the version I like best.
WDYT and comments are most welcome.
Many thanks, Mark.

117681

[Morkel Erasmus]

Mark - again just my opinion - but here goes:
1. the sky looks great - a bit further than I would have taken it but like I said I like the blues in these kinds of skies
2. the foreground however looks (to me) flat and contrast-less and lacks luminosity, your OP FG was much better for me :e3

[Mark Wiseman]

Hi Morkel,
I only worked on the night sky and the star trails, no work was done to the foreground and it just shows how one can be hoodwinked by the change in contrast to the sky alone. I agree about the luminosity and that can be easily corrected.
Thanks for your help and best wishes,
Mark.

[Robert Amoruso]

Mark,

I like the final version you produce. Dark sky is very dramatic. I also like the placement of the star circle near the nook of the notch in the hills.

[Andrew Aveley]

Mark , I would be interested in giving this image a work through to assit you in a balanced reult. Tried with this uploaded image but no result, Composition is great though, The rest is a little to unnatural for my taste sorry :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

I second that, Andrew. How about making the RAW file available to us through Yousendit, Mark?? We'll keep it safe :t3 it's just to work up a good storm and post it here with step-by-step workflow so it gives you a different perspective? Turns out a great learning exercise that way...(see Andreas Liedmann's Black Rhino image a while back where we worked with the RAW file ISO-6400)

[Mark Wiseman]

Hi All,
Thanks for the comments Morkel, Robert and Andrew. I will gladly send you guys the RAW image. How do I go about it?
Thanks Mark.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi All,
Thanks for the comments Morkel, Robert and Andrew. I will gladly send you guys the RAW image. How do I go about it?
Thanks Mark.

Mark - the easiest way is to register on Dropbox.com or Yousendit.com and then send the file download link directly to our email addresses. :bg3:

[Andrew Aveley]

Hi Mark , yes I am on Dropbox so easy as pie :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hey Mark.
Okay, I worked up your RAW file (albeit a bit 'quickly').

First off - I think the main problem here is you didn't have the foreground in focus...at least no the nearmost quiver trees which in my shooting would be the point - get those at the minimum hyperfocal distance of the lens...:e3

See this 100% screen crop to see what I mean...

[Morkel Erasmus]

now for my repost...
tell me what you think, and then I'll tell you what I did...
:t3

[Andrew Aveley]

Here is what I posted earlier on the forum and mot here Morks = I enjoy nocturnal landscape photography and when I saw Marks post I felt I could have some input into my style. My main thought process revolves around White balance and 'temperature of light" . Marks image for example was taken in extremely cold conditions during a really harsh cold spell here in South Africa and so I based my workflow on that. I did it in LR 4 , resized and sharpened with LCE in CS 5. I used adjustment brush to remove colour cast on some trees but no major changes through out. Original WB setting 3900 K as shot , my point 2935 k .Anyone who would like the LR4 preset is welcome to email me and I will send it . Again its a personal starting point for me with most cooler night images. I have cropped the image to remove some issues and also cannot remove the pixels of blue and red you may see. The original file is not 100% but its a great attempt. The point of this is to share my vision of the scene

[Mark Wiseman]

Hi Morkel and Andrew,
Thanks for the help in the processing of this image. From the outset I must mention that this was my first star circle image I have done. The processing of both images is very pleasing to me. I have thanked Andrew previously for his help and to you Morkel, thank you very much for your help.
Morkel, I like what you have done with the gradation of darkness from the top of the sky to the horizon border. As to the focus, all I can say is that it may be wind associated as the closest quiver trees were further than 6m away and my focal point was beyond them. The hyper focal distance was from about 2ft to infinity, but the point has been made to check the focus prior to pushing the shutter release as that is one of the most critical points in this image. Morkel if you can describe and share how you processed the image I would be most grateful as this one post has been a learning process for me, probably the best post so far at BPN.
With many thanks,
Mark.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi Morkel and Andrew,
Thanks for the help in the processing of this image. From the outset I must mention that this was my first star circle image I have done. The processing of both images is very pleasing to me. I have thanked Andrew previously for his help and to you Morkel, thank you very much for your help.
Morkel, I like what you have done with the gradation of darkness from the top of the sky to the horizon border. As to the focus, all I can say is that it may be wind associated as the closest quiver trees were further than 6m away and my focal point was beyond them. The hyper focal distance was from about 2ft to infinity, but the point has been made to check the focus prior to pushing the shutter release as that is one of the most critical points in this image. Morkel if you can describe and share how you processed the image I would be most grateful as this one post has been a learning process for me, probably the best post so far at BPN.
With many thanks,
Mark.

A pleasure, Mark. Thanks for allowing us to work on your file.

After seeing Andrew's version, I think my ideal white balance (colour balance) would be somewhere between the 2. I would reduce some of the warmth/red in my version but not to the point where it looks as blue and green as Andrew's version...but this is all taste IMHO...:S3:

First off, here's a screen capture of the ACR settings I used (I pulled this one straight into PS, skipping LR)...

[Morkel Erasmus]

Once in PS. I did the following (to my recollection).

1. Did a VERY rough job on cloning out the lights that got picked up as you walked in the scene to illuminate the trees.
2. Selected the majority of the trails (sky) - ran LCE on it twice (USM, 20%, 50px)
3. Ran a luminosity mask to tone down highlights, limited it to the sky through mask painting
4. Ran Nik Tonal Contrast (14% on all sliders, 40% opacity on mask layer) on the entire image
5. Resized and sharpened using the sharpening action I posted as a sticky from Philip Perold
6. Adjusted saturation a bit, did selective dodging on the FG

More or less :w3

[Mark Wiseman]

Hi Morkel,
Thanks for the workflow you used on your image. There are one or two differences between what you have done and what I did. The big difference is the colour temp setting as mentioned by Andrew and yourself and the larger values you have given to the Clarity and Vibrance.
With many thanks for your hard work and best wishes,
Mark.