Dreams of Tipis & Stars

I like the idea to use the milky way as if it were smoke rising from the tipi, but I find the overall exposure very dark with very little stars and hardly any shadow detail in the landscape. A double exposure - a longer one for the sky and landscape, and a shorter one for the tipi - might have worked better.

I like your concept, Greg. But I think that a darker tipi and much more visible Milky Way would greatly improve the image.

Greg - this is a compelling image! I love what you envisioned and what you have presented. I do agree with the suggestions for improvement, and wonder if perhaps you could manipulate two layers (perhaps smart objects from RAW) to achieve this if you did not bracket or have various exposures to combine already. I'm fairly certain you could make the sky pop a bit more in ACR and mask that in, while toning down the brightness of the tipi a touch. However this assumes you agree and just hadn't gotten there yet! Ultimately YOU know how you wanted this to look, and I gotta say, it sure has a lot going for it already. Really nicely seen and captured, IMO!

Thanks for the critiques. This is how I envisioned it. I try to add a touch of fantasy to the reality of my images. As the image stands, the sky is brighter than it was to the naked eye, but so is the tent. I do try to balance my art with reality, so that they are believeable images. Having said that, I have been working with the suggestions of darkening the tent and brightening the sky. I have yet to come up with a combination that I am happy with. As far as the comment of having very little stars, I am confused, because I see millions of stars in the shot. Maybe there was some confusion with the black border that I posted with this image? I will continue to rework it and post it when I am happy with it. Thanks again!