The Sky is My Dream

Wow - fantastic John. Truly a beautiful image - well done.

Is this a composite shot? If so, what are the exposures etc?
These Milky Way shots are beginning to really test the boundary between photo art and landscape photography--if there is or should be a line, but that's one for the eternal forum debates (and for the mods to decide...)
On to the critique....
It's very pretty, nice balance and color contrasts--looks like it would make a nice book cover. Cathedral is obviously a great spot for photos! But I can't really relate to it for 3 reasons--the light painting looks very 'staged' or targeted rather than even (which would look more 'natural' to me), the shot looks like a composite, and the distortion is a bit extreme for my tastes. I think i could write a book on why Jared's post appealed to me and this one doesn't as much, but you'd get bored pretty quick so i'll leave it at that.
I respect and applaud your efforts at creativity here, keep at it, i'm just giving you my (often in the minority) opinion. Boost your comment to post ratio a bit and you'll begin to feel my pain

Thanks Bill & Stan.

Stan: Yes it was a composite shot. Two shots a few hours a part at the same spot. There was no light painting involved. All the light were natural. The second shot was about half an hour to an hour before sunrise so there was sufficient light. Thanks again for taking time to look at the image, and your detailed comments.

Hi John,
In a dark room this looks really good. I imagine it will be a pain to print and display.
I would have liked the brighter part of the Milky Way to be higher in the sky, that would balance better against the rock formations, as-is I feel the top of the image is not very interesting and I would consider a crop to a panoramic format.
The light on the rocks is really beautiful whatever the source is.

Its all photo art IMO!

I love this! Fantastic shot.

I too wish people would post more about how they accomplished the image and settings and all that...

Again, KILLER image!

Very interesting take on this place. The glowing Entrada formations are wonderful landing spots in the frame. I too sometimes wonder what's keeping star shots from simply being composited.

I happen to like the light on the formations. Al;so like how the Milky Way falls between them so well.
But the distortion is almost too much, esp. on the right. I think you can successfully 'de-fish' these should you so desire.

This is a fantastic night shot of the milky way. Well done. The distortion doesn't bother me here that much

Too cool John!

Ah--ok John, that explains it! I was wondering why it looked uneven like that--would have been tough to do with a light! Well, it certainly got me thinking, which is what art is supposed to do. I'm not quite sure what Tony's getting at, but i assume he means there's nothing 'wrong' with compositing--and i certainly completely agree. My point was that i'd rather see it used to create a natural effect rather than a surrealistic effect--in landscape photography (in "Photo Art" anything goes). If it's surrealistic, I can't relate to it as something natural.

Yum! Great job with the light painting...which torch ya use?,,,,nevermind...just read through

Fantastic! I recognize that background monolith from the floor of Cathedral Valley. The only way your going to light paint that baby is with a German made Scheinwerfer 43, 2.7 billion Hefner candlepower WW II searchlight! Kidding aside, I really like this.The lighting is great and contrasts wonderfully with the galaxy above. The distortion doesn't bother me. In fact, because the two monoliths are leaning towards one another, it adds, for me, a certain visual continuity! Lastly, Cathedral Valley is certainly a distorted, other-worldly place where a straight line would be a lonely geometric inhabitant. I think this captures the areas physical character within its cosmic setting very nicely.

I was standing next to John so I can testify that it was possible to light-paint these two babies with a small flashlight running on 3 AAA batteries The problem is that the dim light required a long exposure time and high ISO, so the picture quality of the resulting photos were rather noisy. So double exposures came and save the day.

I love the lighting on the rocks and the finished product. The galaxy affect is a terrific look mixed with the rocks. It feels to me more like a finished product with an advanced night telescope set on extreme telephoto, sounds like I'm off though as you probably did not move anything as this developed through simple time. An image that would look great on a cover somewhere as mentioned and blown up would look terrific really just about anywhere. Great work

I like the distortion and think it works well. I agree with Stan about drawing lines with photography as a more literal graphic art (photography is art and is never literal realism) and fantasy art but I think this image is in the grey zone and I don't know where those types of lines should be specifically drawn. I'll let others smarter than myself figure that out.

Awesome sky! There is almost zero light pollution where I live but I am still amazed by the vastness you've captured here.

Really fantastic John.

pure WOW! fantastic shot!

the side light gives the since of drama here
well location for the milky way

Beautifully done!

Wonderful nightscape! Love the colors and composition! Great work!

Fantastic job on this John, I could easily get lost in that sky. The lighting on the sandstone formations is spot on.

Gary.