Milky Way Mooring

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When I shot this a couple of years ago I thought I should try some of those stunning images where the stars appear to shine in a relatively bright sky -- images that you will never actually see by looking at the sky, but stunningly beautiful. Then I saw the milky way, and realized that I was more interested in capturing the reality of the stars to share with others than in creating fantasy images that exist only on paper and in the imagination.  The result was not particularly impressive.  Months later, I revisited the image and tried some processing alternatives.  I boosted the saturation and made some tiny curves adjustments to come up with sort of a hybrid, where the stars are in a naturally dark sky, but brighter than we normally percieve them.  I hope this makes it eye-catching, but still close to reality.

I still have problems with star images.  I find that resizing them and presenting them in different formats -- prints, or even viewing on different monitors -- makes a great difference in how they appear.

Canon 5DII; 14mm.
30 sec. @ f/2.8; ISO 1600
Tripod in knee-deep water, "painting" light with an LED headlamp.
2 frames stitched by hand in CS5
Deep blue "waves" of surface fog (probably from LED headlamp) were partially desaturated in processing.