Planetary Conjunction and Chalk Formations

Here is my best planetary conjunction effort from March 12, 2012. I was shooting with Scott Bean when I made this image of Venus & Jupiter riding low over the softly backlit chalk formations of the Castle Rocks area. I had never done any astrophotography before so it was nice to have Scott along for some pointers & tips.

The rocks make a good foreground. I like it. It makes me realize I need to get out on the road.

Thanks Darren. Scott was doing a lot of light painting of the formations (and I helped him on a few). Even though I did light paint a few images I was more interested on my first attempt to keep the emphasis on the sky. I appreciate your comment.

Excellent stuff, Wayne.
spaceweather.com suggested a slightly earlier "time" for this shot.
They maintained that the hues of blues and reds a period of time before sundown made the best color photo. It appears you missed that time span but who is to say this is not superb. Not me.
I've followed this conjunction for about a month. Posted samples of my attempts on flickr.com/photos/syzygyphoto if you care to look. None were quite this good.
the fisch

Thanks Larry, one thing is for sure, I don't know much about astrophotography. This is the first time I purposely photographed the heavens so I hadn't done any research on who, what, where or when. I just knew that I wanted to photograph the chalk formations and since the planetary conjunction had gotten so much press I figured why not kill two birds with one stone by photographing this celestial event at the same time.

Certainly that area of the state has some of our darker night skies so shooting the planetary conjunction before sundown would seem counter intuitive to me. Long story short, I don't anticipate doing a lot of night sky photography but I sure enjoyed this particular experience. Thanks for your comments.

p.s. I did go to your flicker site and saw your images ... really like the strong starburst effects you got.

I like it and it was shot on my Birthday! Beautiful!

Wayne, great star shot! I would like to see more of the foreground in your photo. Have you tried to combine two shots, one for the foreground and one for the stars?

Tom I purposely wanted only a hint of the chalk formation's ridge lines to be shown. I could bring out more brightness to show the ridge lines but in this series of images there is no detail in the formations themselves. Thanks for your comments.