Milky Skies Over Alberta Falls

Title

Milky Skies Over Alberta Falls

Artist

Mike Berenson

Medium

Photograph

Description

On the way down from another location in Rocky Mountain National Park, I found myself drawn to the beauty of Alberta Falls. I had joined friend David Kingham on a night hike up to Mills Lake and with the Milky Way skies in perfect position over the falls as we were headed back down, I decided to give the waterfall a little attention as well.

It's a tough spot to get a shot though… with steep, loose terrain making it tough to get a good angle on the falls. But with awesome Milky Way skies above, I was determined to capture the scene - ideally without getting tossed into the drink!

How I Got The Shot
As the moon had already set when I captured this image, I knew I wanted to fill in the foreground with some light painting. I chose to use indirect illumination using a spike on the ground and trees off to the left side.

Another key decision I made was to shoot with multiple exposures. I did this because I knew I needed a higher ISO setting to capture the details in the Milky Way skies above which would mean more noise for the foreground. So I shot my ISO 6400 image for the sky and then shot again with a ISO 1600 and some light painting. The result was an improvement in quality of the final image.

With that said, some of you may be thinking…

That's great if you know how to blend…
but how do you blend multiple exposures so they look good?

When I first determined that I wanted to start blending multiple exposures, I knew that shooting them wasn't too hard… it was the blending in Photoshop in a way that looked natural that was the key. And at the time, I found that my lack of techniques in this area was holding me back.

Along the way, I learned some techniques that I now use to quickly and efficiently blend multiple exposures in Photoshop. I teach these and other techniques in my Night Photography Workshops - in the classroom sessions on post-processing. And with my series of articles & tutorials on Night Photography, I decided to make this subject (blending exposures) my first video tutorial - something I've been considering for some time.

With that, here is a bit of an experiment where I invite you to watch and listen and participate. As I said, this is my first video tutorial and I encourage your feedback. I'm very interested to hear what you think.

This video tutorial is available in my fulll post at (http://www.coloradocaptures.com/night-photography-blog/blending-multiple-exposures-photoshop-video-tutorial) and from Screencast.com, Youtube, or Google Drive.

Photo Gear
• Camera Body - Nikon D800 Digital SLR Camera
• Camera Lens - Nikon Fisheye AF Nikkor 16mm f/2.8D Autofocus Lens
• Tripod Head - Acratech GV2 Ball Head / Gimbal Head with Lever Clamp & Acratech Large Leveling Base FEISOL CB-50DC Ballhead with QP-144750 Release Plate
• Tripod Legs - FEISOL Elite CT-3472 Rapid Tripod Legs
• Remote Trigger - Vello Shutterboss Version II Timer Remote Switch for Nikon with 10-Pin Connection

Exposure Settings - 2 Blended Exposures

Exposure #1
• ISO: 6400
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter Speed: 25 seconds

Exposure #2
• ISO: 1600
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter Speed: 20 seconds

Uploaded

September 4th, 2014

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