Moonlit

I've been really inspired by the night photography of Steve Sieren and others lately, and thought I'd give it a try. Conditions were not ideal for the 'starry sky' effect, with lots of clouds and a bright moon. This is a blend of 5 images where I used a flashlight to light paint different parts of the scene with 30 sec exposures. The sky is a 10 sec exposure, to try and limit star motion as much as possible. I tried to be subtle with the light painting, to give it a more natural, moonlit appearance. The biggest problem was dealing with color casts, as the LED flashlight put a green cast in places. Trying to selectively balance more to the majenta side was only partially successful, so I ended up partially desaturating the snow. It was a pain and led to, I feel, passable results. Maybe I should have just used bursts of flash off camera instead.

I know it's dark, but in postprocessing, I tried to retain the feeling of nighttime, but any opinions on alternative processing and dealing with color casts when light painting would be appreciated. Also, I was surprised to see star movement at 30 sec - I suppose it depends on how far away from polaris you are shooting - this was northeast - any thoughts on limitiing star movement would also be helpful.

Sorry for all the babble. ***PLEASE VIEW LARGE*** (the smaller version just doesn't look good).

Canon 5DMII. 16-35 @ 24 mm. ISO 800. 10sec and 30 sec at f/13.