Moonlit Layers
by Alex Noriega
Layers of the San Gabriel Mountains, in Angeles National Forest, blanketed in fog and illuminated by the rising moon. The warm light of the city of Los Angeles is the color and light source on the horizon.
At first, there appeared to be some banding in the sky that was present in all my raw files from this scene - but only now did I realize the lines are probably nearly-faded contrails. They extend into the cooler area of the sky, yet retain a warm color, so they must be a physical thing catching the warm light of the city.
I've considered reprocessing this to try to bring out a little tree detail in the foreground layer and in the upper-right dark area. The detail was barely there to begin with, so I actually initially darkened it (in the foreground) so as not to be distracting - the moon was pretty low and only hitting the bright areas of the landscape. I've mostly just been too lazy to reprocess, because there were some unavoidable tree branches sticking into the scene that I remember being annoying to clone out.
Nikon D200, 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor
1 minute exposure, f/4, ISO 200
July 2011
Comments
22 commentsJack, regarding the detail at f/4: on an f/1.8 prime lens, f/4 was stopped down enough to give me tack-sharp detail to the edges. At 50mm, focused at infinity, that aperture gave me depth of field all the way up to 100 feet in front of me - and the closest layer of mountains was hundreds, if not thousands, of feet out. I've seen some photographers, quite curiously, shoot at (for example) ISO 800, f/16, 70mm on an isolation shot with no foreground. True, some lenses may need to be shot at f/8 for optimal performance, but f/16? At that point, they're shooting themselves in the foot with the higher ISO and the effects of diffraction.
It never occurred to me to clone out the electrical towers - I guess I could, but I never thought they were distracting. They do give a bit of a sense of scale upon close inspection. Since the light on the horizon is from a city (and one as big as LA, at that), I wasn't going for a 100% natural depiction. I suppose I could clone them out and say the horizon was lit by the rising sun..
I attached a version where I selected the warm areas and painted over them with a low-flow brush with a cooler color.. also toned down the highlights in the fog a bit.
Peter