Wilson's Creek Sunset

Well - you never know when you need a tripod, and I didn't have one on this night when I made a quick trip into Wilson's Creek Battlefield.

So this is an attempt at a blended image using two hand-held shots - CS3 is really good at aligning these sorts of shots. At ISO 400, it suffers from a little noise that I still need to work on. The colors were quite nice as this was after the sun went down, but I decided I liked the B&W better.

Canon 20D
ISO 400
f8 for 1/13s and .3s
EFS 10-22 @ 14mm

I like what you have going with the B&W, I like the sky here. It may be my monitor but the foreground looks a bit to dark? Nicely done blending the images though, going to have to learn how to do this myself. BTW, I like the color version posted on your web site also. Nice work and thanks for sharing!

Thanks, David. Monitors are notoriously bad at displaying the shades of gray the way I want. I know I'm riding a fine line here and some will see it way too dark while some will not. It's the price of displaying things on the web, I suppose. I can only say for sure that on my monitor, it looks OK!

Tim, it looks great on my monitor. Great shot, I would like to see this in print. I remember the B & W prints you had at the gathering and I am sure this is on par with them.

The b/w conversion really helps convey the subject's sense of time and place, much better than the color version Tim. Is that moonshine in the sky, sure looks like it. I too would like to see this in print.

Beautifully done, Tim, especially without a tripod! You've caught some very dramatic light, that reflects back on a troubled time. I like the BW version best, and imagine that a print of the finished work will be stunning. Outstanding image!

Looks good on my laptop, good job Tim!

Thanks for the comments. Wayne - the light in the sky can be anything you imagine it to be! But in reality, this is looking towards the East. The sunset in the opposite sky was a dud - the sun just dropped down behind some haze and disappeared - but these great big thunder clouds were lit up nicely in multiple layers for a while after the sun went down.

Nice shot Tim. I like the fence line fading away.

Hey Tim, thanks for the info. I'm just going to contend that it's moonlight because of the way the clouds are backlit, not front light as you would expect from a sunset shot looking east. Moonlight, sunlight who cares ... still a great shot!