Photographers Notes I liked the Day and Night challenge instantly when I read it. I had been exploring star photography, both point stars and star trails, and had thought to combine that with a day scene. It was much harder than I thought at the time.
First off, we had a few (count ‘em, three) nights that were clear. In the Pacific Northwest USA this time of year, we get a lot of clouds and rain. Plus I’m not very good at the star stuff, yet, and it takes many attempts over a long time. But I got some images I could work with.
The day scene was fine. I simply left my tripod where it was and came back in the morning. I mostly shoot HDR sets in RAW. Probably 80% of the images I produce are HDR, and even if I don’t, the bracketing buys me some exposure insurance. So the day set is an HDR composite of seven images.
I had great success stacking 27 star trail images, and while the star parts were good, the background/foreground was not. So I went back to the drawing board for a 15-minute exposure, where noise is a much bigger issue. And I had some success with that.
Next I tried blending the tone-mapped HDR daylight scene with the night star trail scene. Nothing worked; I mean nothing. Well, Photoshop worked. It did what I told it to, but I evidently didn’t tell it to do the right things. Result: Crap!
I woke up yesterday morning feeling the pressure of challenge deadlines due to the WPL. And I had an idea. What if I could use a zipper to reveal the daylight scene behind the night scene – or vice versa? Off to shoot a photo of a zipper. Also it was not as easy for me as I’d like since I have no studio, no lights, and no particular studio talent. I hung a zipper from a broom handle, using black thread, in front of black construction paper. And I lit it using a halogen desk lamp and a mini-flashlight. Eventually I got something that worked.
The rest is stacking and mask work … classic Photoshop stuff. I like the result, finally, and hope you, dear voters, do to.
Post Processing • Photo 1 – Daylight Scene
o Composite 7 images to HDR (Photomatix)
o Tonemap (Photomatix)
o Reduce Noise (Neat Image)
o Dust-off (PSCS5 Healing Brush)
• Photo 2 – Night Scene
o Convert RAW Image (PSCS5 Camera Raw)
o Correct Lens Distortion (PSCS5 Lens Filter)
o Reduce Noise (Neat Image)
o Color and Contrast (PSCS5 Curves Layers)
o Dodge & Burn (PSCS5 Overlay Layer)
• Photo 3 – Zipper
o Convert RAW Image (PSCS5 Camera Raw)
o Isolate Zipper (PSCS5 Select Color Range & Mask)
• Stacked Images in Layers (PSCS5)
o Mask Zipper (PSCS5 Mask + Layer Styles)
o Mask Night Scene inside Zipper (PSCS5 Mask)
o Border (PSCS5 Stroke Layers)
o Resize (Perfect Resize)
o Sharpen (PSCS5 USM)
o Save for Web (PSCS5)
Camera Data • Date: 2011-09-29 and 2011-10-02
• Camera: Nikon D3
• Lenses:
o Nikon AF Fisheye-Nikkor 16mm f/2.8D
o Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G ED
o Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8D
• ISO: Various
• Aperture: Various
• Shutter: Various
Statistics
Place: 11 out of 38 Avg (all users): 6.9290 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 6.4091 Avg (non-participants): 7.0068 Views since voting: 1608 Views during voting: 522 Votes: 169 Comments: 13 Favorites: 0
This is a brilliant idea. and well executed. I would have liked to have seen more detail (e.g. landscape, etc) behind the 'zipper,' but this is a very cool picture.
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