Illumination (WC)

Scott, this is a cool image. You had good timing to be there on the night this was happening. I look forward to seeing your Milky Way shots. The only thing I would do here is clean up the red and blue dots in the lower left corner. The red just looks like a hot pixel or some artifact, but I'm not sure what the blue dot is.

Scott, I agree with your thought that this looks to be strongly illuminated with artificial light.  In spite of that you got an amazingly dense star field and (of course) the formation shows some fine shapes and details.  Having put some effort into balancing artificial light and star light, I know how hard that is and how amazingly little artificial light it takes to get a balance.

A striking and surreal image. I agree that the formation is too strongly lit, but it does make for nice colors and detail. The sky looks great here. Look forward to the Milky Way shots that you did get elsewhere.

Basically, I think this is a pretty cool image.  The star field seems remarkably dense, the advantage of a very dark sky.  The rock formation is interesting and shows good detail.  I agree the rocks are too bright or too yellow.  Can you reduce the yellow saturation or reduce further the brightness of the rocks without ruining the shot?

Scott,  I'm really looking forward to camping at Goblin Valley S. P. after seeing your awesome night image of goblins on the prowl. The stars are amazing!   We plan on staying at the park in September to have easy access to the trailhead of Horseshoe Canyon and the Great Gallery and will definitely spend some time in Goblin Valley trying to get some interesting nighttime shots.   Where there many photographers shooting the night sky while you were there?

Paula, they told me they had 11 photographers in their workshop plus the two leaders. I don't think there were any other photographers, besides me, that were not part of their group. There were several photographers shooting the formation in this image (which accounts for the headlamps in the llc that I forgot to clone out), but most were in the main valley. Actually, it was inconvenient because I wanted to do some light painting on the more goblin like figures in the main valley, but it seemed like there were photographers positioned everywhere when I got there after shooting the formation in this photo, and I did not want to wander around with my headlamp and ruin anyone's shot. They were even still there when I left and went to the campground at 1:00 am. I ended up just shooting some rocks off to the side in the main valley, but I would have liked to have been able to wander around and try different shots. The main valley area really lends itself to night photography because of the easy access from the main viewpoint parking lot.

Finally, since you are camping, I wanted to menion that when I got to the park, someone had cancelled their reservation and they put me in campsite 17, which backs into some cool hoodos. Very attractive campsite, and the night sky from my campsite was truly amazing (especially for someone from NE Ohio). Campsite 18 is even better. You could shoot formation against the night sky right in that campsite, although the main valley is probably better.

The light-painted rocks really contrast/pop against the dark starry sky. Inclinations would be to reduce the brightness of the rock formation a little more, and clone out the plane track. Their lighting job looks pretty uniform.
 

Stunning!  An alternate composition might be a pano crop, losing some of the top.

You certainly managed to get a lot of stars in the sky, Scott.  If you've already reduced the light on the formation two different ways, I agree that it was probably overly well lighted.  I'd be tempted to clone over the two or three lights on the far left from other photographers.  The results are gorgeous.

 

Excellent work - night photography is tough.
Congrats on the very well-deserved WP!
Sandy