Booster Separation WC602

Dramatic shot, but I would like to see more at the bottom to "anchor" the photo. I realize, that you were probably cropping out cars and people. In that case, maybe a crop at the top of the roof eliminating all of the vegetation to the right of the lighthouse would work better.

I'm impressed that you can actually see the shuttle & booster in this shot. Good capture, Paul. The lighthouse was a nice bonus.

That’s cool. The light on the trail is captivating.

Interesting how we can see the different color of light on the lower elevation portion of the trail than the upper elevation portion.

I too am surprised that we can see the booster and shuttle, especially at 18MM.

What a unique shot! Very unusual pairing of a rocket launch and a lighthouse lit by the sunset. I think you made a good comp out of this with the palm tree and lighthouse more to the left and the exhaust plume streaking diagonally across the more empty space on the right. Our eye is directed to the right to view the colorful origin of the plume and then moves back through the image to the left side again while following the plume. I think the cropped buildings and vegetation work well to help emphasize that, yes, the buildings are nice, but the main focus is what is going on in the sky. I think Lucy's cropping suggestion also has merit.

That quite an arc of brightness and it's way cool to see the shine from the shuttle and the separated booster parts. Great capture. I wouldn't crop this. I think the keeper's house and the extra light at the base of the lighthouse are important to the "story".

Thanks all for the comments. There seems to be both sides of less bottom foreground or not. I did remove the corner of an RV from the lower right, replacing it with foliage. While I would have liked a shuttle, sky & lighthouse only image, I think the foreground at the bottom provides a nice balance.
The last couple of years of shuttle launches I attempted to photograph from different area locations. My close-up night shot opportunity was scrubbed, and I was unable to repeat that attempt in Titusville.
This was a shoot that I reconnoitered in advance. I had not watched a shuttle launch form this location, but I though it probably had promise. I searched on the internet and found an old newspaper photo similar to the image I made, but without the plants, as the lighthouse grounds had been significantly changed since then. When I did my pre-launch visit I attempted to locate the same position as the newspaper photographer did, the closest I could come was behind (shooting across) a parking lot. The day of the launch I set up, along with a few other photographers and waited. A photographer came by holding the photo that I had seen from the newspaper, it was his and he was trying to figure out where he had been before, as everything around the lighthouse had changed. He moved along to another spot, passing by after the launch bemoaning that he should have used a wide angle again instead of the telephoto lens.