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How to Plan and Photograph the Milky Way

After recently moving away from the Canon 5D Mark II to a Sony A7RII, I was itching to get out and make the most of my new purchase by giving the low light performance a play with some astro photography.

Milky way over The Pinnacles, Western Australia
Milky way over The Pinnacles, Western Australia
Milky way photography is something that has evaded me over the years due to the Canon struggling in low light conditions (to put it politely). With the purchase of the A7RII, it was now finally time that I could get out there and shoot in low light conditions without having an image of nasty noise!
 
But there was one slight problem… I knew nothing about the milky way and spent too much time admiring other people’s photos to take a step back and learn about how to photograph it myself!

Things to consider when planning a milky way shoot

For the purpose of this post, I’m not going to go into great depths on how to use PhotoPills to plan a Milky Way shoot as I think other people have covered this in much better detail than I can. This tutorial by the PhotoPills team is a great starter.
 
There’s also some other great tools out there for planning a milky way shoot such as Stellarium and Sun Surveyor. Like anything, it comes down to personal preference and finding something that works best for you. For me, photo pills is easy to use which is good for a simpleton like me 😉
 
Sky tracking mounts are becoming a popular way to reduce the noise in milky way shots. A popular mount is the SkyWatcher mount which rotates to offset the movement of the night sky which in turn allows you to capture longer exposures at a smaller aperture. By doing so this allows you to photograph at a lower ISO which in turn means less noise.
 
This post will look to cover some of the questions I had as I was learning more about Astro photography. Sometimes it was simple things like
  • What is the milky way season?
  • How do I find a dark sky?
  • When is the best time to photograph the milky way?
  • Can you photograph the milky way while the moon is up?
  • How do I check the cloud forecast to ensure clear skies?
  • What’s the best camera settings for photographing the milky way?

Let’s get started.

When is the best time to photograph the milky way?

Northern or Southern Hemisphere?

Depending on where you are in the world, the milky way is only visible at certain parts of the year. Sure, you might be able to see some parts of the milky way but galactic centre and other parts may be out of view. 

The reason that the milky way is only visible at certain parts of the year is largely due to the curvature and movement of the earth.  This means for those in the northern hemisphere, your best viewing times of the milky way is between the months of November to February. For those in the southern hemisphere, is between February to October. 

This is what people are referring to when they refer to the milky way season starting or finishing.

 Is the milky way visible straight after sunset?

Can I just take photos once blue hour ends? Well sort of but not quite.

Watching the milky way rise in Lancelin, Western Australia
Like the moon and sun, the milky way begins rising in the late evening and then starts setting in the early morning. The best time to photograph the milky way and all its galactic core glory is once it has fully risen.  Depending on the time of the year, this can sometimes be at crazy hours of 3 am in the morning or more comfortable times at 10:30 pm in the evening. 
 
The reason why we wait for the milky raise to fully rise is due to the milky way being huge (100,000 light years in fact! Thanks Google…). If you try photograph the Milky Way while it is still rising, you may find some of the milky way will be cut off and sitting below the horizon.  With this in mind, you can still get out there and photograph the Milky Way as its rising but you may find some of it is hidden behind the horizon until it finishes rising.

Why should I care about what phase the moon is in?

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and thought how bright the stars looked compared to other times? This often comes down to two factors… Light pollution and the moon phase. 

The first factor that can influence the visibility of the night sky is based on how far you are away from light pollution when looking at the sky. Generally you will find the best skies are found in locations far away from nearby cities. This is due to the amount of light pollution which a city generates which in turn reduces your  where you are far away from the light pollution generated.

The second factor which influences how dark the sky will be also comes down to which particular phase the moon is in.

Generally the most optimal time to photograph the milky way is when the moon is in the ‘new moon’ phase. During this time, the moon emits little to no light and increases your chances of seeing the milky way in all its glory. But to go one step further, I’d also recommend planning your shoot when the moon has either risen or set to increase your visibility of the milkyway.  Using an app like PhotoPills will give you all this information. Alternatively, websites such as Moon Giant provide a calendar view of the calendar for a particular day of the month.

Finding a location with dark skies

Light pollution over Melbourne, Australia

Depending on where you live, one of the challenges you will have when it comes to photographing the Milky Way is finding a location that isn’t filled with light pollution from a nearby city or town. 

Luckily there are tools out there to help with understanding what the level of light pollution is at a specific location. One of my favourites is Dark Site Finder which  provides an overlay over Google Maps rating the light pollution in the area from Dark to Bright.
 
Please note that the data used for Dark Site Finder is 10~ years old so the accuracy for some locations will vary. 
 
But what about photographing a Milky Way under a light polluted sky? One of my favourites is this stunning photo captured of the Sydney Opera House during White Night in 2017 shows that it is more than possible to get a photograph of the Milky Way under a light polluted sky. 

 How do I check the cloud forecast for the night?

What it looks like when there’s a little bit of cloud. You can only imagine what it’s like when there’s more…
Living in inner-city Melbourne where the urban sprawl of the the city feels like it never ends, I need to venture far if I want to find nice dark skies mentioned in the previous section. As I’m sometimes driving 1-2 hours to get to a location with dark skies, I want to ensure that the location is clear and I’m not wasting my time.
 
Luckily there’s some great tools out there to assist with knowing what the cloud coverage is like at a specific location. Here in Australia, one of my favourite tools is Cloud Free Night. Using the below screenshot as an example, Cloud Free Night gives me a 3 day cloud forecast for the low, mid and high cloud coverage with also the forecast fog cover.  When you only have a limited amount of time to photograph the milky way, cloud forecast tools are a great way to validate that your potentially long road trip and stumbling around in the dark isn’t going to be a waste of time.
Tools like Cloud Free Night are super handy for looking at what the low, mid and high level clouds are doing over 24-48 hours
 
For those not in Australia there’s also Clear Dark Sky which provides similar cloud forecasts.

Why do I have to wait until the time PhotoPills recommends?

Screenshot from Photo Pills showing me the best time to photograph the milky way at Dog Rocks, Victoria as seen below

PhotoPills (and other tools) recommend a window of time to photographing the galactic core of the Milky Way. As the moon is a light source (and quite a strong one depending on where it’s at in its cycle), this brightens the sky to the point where it makes capturing the galactic core of the milky way difficult. The window of time recommended by PhotoPills is essentially when the moon has finished setting and the sky will be at its darkest. This window of time becomes the optimal time to photographing the galactic core.

Using the screenshot to the right as an example, I’m able to drop a pin to place where I will be taking a photo from which then allows me to see where the milky way will be rising from (the grey line) and where it will setting (the black line). Photo Pills is also recommending the best time of this month to photograph the milky way which is indicated by the full bars at the top of the screenshot.
 
Being able to see where the milky way will rise and set is super handy especially when you have a composition in mind (like a tree in this case) but are unsure where the milky way will be sitting in the sky. By using an app like Photo Pills, I’m able to cycle through the various times of the year until I find a time when the milky way is sitting in a position that works well for my composition.
 
I used Photo Pills to plan a recent trip to Dog Rocks, Victoria. The tool allowed me to plan exactly when the milky way would be sitting above the tree (as shown in the previous thumbnail).

Can you photograph the milky way when the moon is still setting?

Definitely!

The milky way rising above moonlit dunes in Western Australia
The milky way rising above moonlit dunes in Western Australia
In fact, I actually prefer photographing while the moon is still up as you have the moon acting as a light source helping illuminate your foreground.
 
If you are planning to shoot while the moon is still setting, I’d recommend getting out while the moon is around 0-50% of its cycle. Any more and it becomes too bright. The milky way purists will call out that you’re not getting the milky way in all its glory but the trade off is worth it if you ask me.
 

What are the best camera settings for photographing the milky way?

  • Use a camera with good low light performance – Photographing in dark conditions means you will need to take your photos with a high ISO (generally 3200-4000 but this can vary). With older cameras especially, the noise at this ISO range can be on the higher side compared to new cameras which have much lower noise when photographing at a high ISO.
  • Use a sturdy tripod – Shooting in low light conditions where your exposure will be around the 20 second mark, it helps to have a sturdy tripod to support your camera.
  • Use a fast lens – Ideally shoot with a lens around f1.4 to f4 depending on your budget. Anything higher (f4+) may make it difficult to capture the dynamic range of the milky way.
  • Use a mid-range ISO (3200) – Anything lower and you may have trouble capturing the milky way and anything higher may introduce too much noise depending on your camera body.
  • Compose with the live view – One of the challenges of photographing the milky way is trying to focus your camera. My favourite trick is to put the camera into live view and focus on to the brightest star. If that fails another option is to focus your lens to infinity.
  • Find a shutter speed that captures enough light without introducing blur – One trick that’s handy for shooting the milky way is knowing the 500 rule which helps with calculating the longest exposure (in seconds) before the stars begin to turn into star trails. Using this technique, you divide 500 by the focal length of your lens. As an example if you’re shooting with a 20mm lens (500/20), this would result in a shutter speed of 25 seconds. 

Questions?

If you have any questions or require any clarification about the points made in this blog post, please don’t hesitate to reach out via the contact page.

Thanks for reading!

Alex

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Before and After – Under the Stars

Sitting under the stars in Pimba, South Australia
Sitting under the stars in Pimba, South Australia

In the last few years I’ve been in awe of the work by Michael Shainblum who is just one of the many people  upping the game when it comes to silky clean milky way and star photographs. I have to admit, milky way photography has never been one of my strongest points and I’ll often blame the age of my Canon 5D Mark II being limited in lowlight as an excuse to not get out and shoot milky ways. With a recent trip I was keen to challenge myself with this photograph titled Under the Stars which features me, sitting on a hammock attached to a tree wrapped in fairy lights under the milky way with a fully stoked fire keeping us warm. The end photo required a few shots at varying exposures to bring it all together which I’ll look to walk you through in this post.

Challenging your in camera and post processing techniques

On a drive from Melbourne to Perth (50 hours of driving) I was keen to explore some of the night skies in the middle of nowhere and add a couple of milky way shots to my gallery. Yes, the Canon 5D Mark II struggled at ISO 3200 but unless you’re looking close, it’s not too noticeable (well I think so anyway..!)

[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]My Melbourne to Perth roadtrip post has more photos from this trip where I explored some of the best parts of Australia[/box]

This is one of my favourite photos of the trip and is something that was just a concept I was keen to try. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off in getting the right exposures and post processing it correctly but I’m pretty happy with the end result. 

The hammock wasn’t just for decoration and was the perfect way to kick back before the sunset

Coming up with a concept that’s outside your comfort zone and giving it a go is the only way to really push your development in hands on photography and post processing. There were other concepts that I toyed with while we were away and you know what? They didn’t come off. But it was fun taking them and giving them a try. Next time you’re planning a photography outing, why not set yourself a lofty goal and see how you go executing it? If you fail, you’ll learn so much on how to do it different next time. If you succeed, you’ll no doubt pick up on things you can do better next time while learning little techniques that you may not normally use in your normal post processing workflow.

[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]I recently bought a new travel tripod and compared the 5 most popular tripods on the market. Give my travel tripod guide a read if you’re looking for a lightweight tripod for your next trip![/box]

About the photograph

Unglamorous camp photo. I couldn’t resist and camped without my tent cover. Sleeping under the stars was something amazing

For this photograph, Under the Stars, we were camping in Pimba, South Australia which is basically in the middle of no where. As we were driving around the area looking for somewhere to set up our tents for the night, we found this secluded part located just off the salt lake and surrounded by this tree you see in the photo. Straight away we knew where we were camping for the night. It was perfect, silence that was almost eerie and skies that were darker than some of my brother’s music tastes in high school (really dark! Sorry Rich 😉 ) 

After shooting the sunset and then shooting the milky way down at the salt lake for a few more hours, we eventually headed back to our tents but were still keen to shoot for a while longer to make the most of the dark skies.

With a hammock already in the tree from some lazy beers in the sun earlier and the fire lit to warm up, we decided to pull the solar powered fairy lights out of the car which we had bought on the first day of our trip and neglected ever since. I knew they would eventually come in handy..!  

[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]Interested in landscape photography? My guide to landscape photography shows you how to get started in this fun part of photography[/box]

Taking the photograph

The final photo was a mix of 4 images with the other 6 very loosely used where required (i.e. detail in the tree or fire)

When experimenting with an image concept I have a habit of going overboard with my image brackets. Throw in the poor performance of the Canon 5D Mark II and you have 10 bracketed images. Ok ok. I probably could have got by with less but better safe than sorry right? 

There is some reasoning to my madness with the need for having 10 different images coming from:

  • Tree and fairy lights –With a light wind around this meant a shorter exposure of the tree and fairy lights was needed to avoid any shake. This had to be a high ISO shot to get a shorter exposure (5 sec)
  • Me sitting in the hammock – Trying to sit still in a hammock with no subtle movements should be an Olympic sport. Either that or I have ants in my pants. With this said, I needed a shorter exposure  (2.5 sec) of me sitting in the hammock to minimise the risk of any subtle movements
  • Exposing for the stars behind the tree – With the plan to make this a two image panoramic (one for the scene you see in most of the frame and another for the milky way sky) it was important to bracket a shot of the stars behind the tree which would allow for a seamless alignment of the two images
  • Positioning the camera further up to capture the milky way – I won’t lie the milky way wasn’t directly above the tree like the photo suggests but it was close! Unfortunately it was hovering just to the right of the tree however by angling the camera up I was able to capture a frame which would later be used above three
  • Short burst for the fire – The plan was to capture the fire looking more natural rather than a blur of orange light. Even at ISO 25600 I wasn’t able to get an exposure short enough to get the fire how I wanted it. At ISO 25600, the Canon 5D Mark II really comes into its own with its amazing handling of noise (sarcasm intended). 
  • Couple of extra frames for good measure – I’ve got nothing. Press the button and hope for the best for a few frames?

Bringing it all together

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I’d love to tell you that I processed this with the same level of precision like Marc Adamus in the space of 10 minutes. But in reality of me being sleep deprived after driving 12 hours the day before and not really knowing what I was doing, the edit for this photo took a couple of hours or so of extreme procrastination and trial and error. 

The key elements to processing this image (after we get past the trial and error):

  • Bringing all the concepts together with layer masks – As mentioned earlier in the post, I shot a series of frames at different ISO levels and shutter speeds to minimise noise where possible and capture specific detail (i.e. me in the hammock or the detail of the fairy lights).
  • Cloning out the car – Not sure when composing that I didn’t notice a small part of the car in the frame. Whoops. A quick touch over with the clone stamp tool had it removed.
  • Colour grading – Sorry, that sounds wanky but it also sounds like I know what I’m talking about so let’s run with it. Colour grading was selectively applied to the image using layer masks. The intent here is to control the colour to parts of the scene which may have been affected by noise. Parts of the image where these minor tweaks were applied include adjusting the blue hues in the sky and dialling back the orange glow on the sand.
  • Overlaying the milky way – Dropping the milky way into the shot was either going to make or break the photo. In an effort to make it look as natural as possible, I used the bracketed image with the stars as the base image of the sky. I then used the image which had the milky way with a very subtle transition through the tree using an inverse selection. 
  • Noise reduction – Shooting at ISO 3200 and higher does leave you with some ugly noise in parts (i.e. around the dark parts of the sand where I’ve tried to pull back some detail). Fortunately Nik Collection’s free Dfine tool works wonders for the removal of noise. I don’t apply noise reduction across my whole image and prefer to just apply it selectively to parts of the image most affected. When you are applying noise reduction, you are reducing the sharpness of the image so it’s important to ensure you are only applying it where needed to minimise any loss of sharpness. 
  • Dodging of the scene – As I was using exposures of various dynamic ranges, there wasn’t much needed in the way of dodge and burning of the scene. With only some minor dodging applied to the fairy lights to make them appear brighter and further dodging around the fire to create the flare effect you see in the final image.

To help give you a sense of how the different adjustments were made and effected the image, I’ve put together this short clip which gradually introduces the various layers to reach the final image.

[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]If you enjoyed this post, be sure to give my Before and After series a look for similar posts[/box]

Feel free to use the contact page if you have any comments or questions about this post.

Thanks for reading!

Alex

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Before and After – Port Melbourne

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Port Melbourne Before
Port Melbourne After
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Driving around Port Melbourne on a rainy Sunday with Jon Sander last winter, we stumbled across this overpass that provides a great view of one of Melbourne’s busier highways. We were fortunate that the overpass was quiet and isolated away from the traffic below making its way in and out of Melbourne.

So… The photo you see is actually a composite of three images. One image formed the base with an additional two images being used to exaggerate the amount of traffic. Sure, I could have kept the shutter open for longer but to be honest – I am slightly pedantic when it comes to these things. Sometimes it can be easier to capture the base image and snap seperate frames when you see a large lump of traffic or a truck coming. Using layer-masks makes dropping the additional traffic into the frame quite easy. Over the top? Probably.

When it came to the colour grading of the image, I wanted to keep the cold feel from the day (keeping the sky looking cold and gloomy) but wanted some warmth to parts of the image. Using layer masks and a warmer temperature, I warmed the bottom half of the image while leaving the top half of the frame with a cold feel (using a layer mask to ensure the top half remain untouched).

For the remainder of the image, I used a range of dodge and burning to:

  • Bring out the star effect in the lights
  • Lighten the surrounding buildings
  • Add mood to the sky

And that’s that 🙂 Apologies that this post isn’t glamorous with interesting information. It wasn’t the most complex scene or photo to edit. The only trickery here was around the multiple layers used to exaggerate the flow of traffic.

If you have any questions, be sure to comment or drop an email!

Alex

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Before and After – Liffey Falls

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Liffey Falls Before

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As a photographer, we all have one or two images that are personal favourites. For me, this is mine. It’s a photo captured at Liffey Falls, Tasmania on a wet and wintery day.

Generally personal favourites for me are images that have back stories that make them what they are.  Before taking this photograph I had spent 4 days driving around the Tasmanian West Coast in constant torrential rain without much opportunity to get the photos I’d hoped for. Sure it was beautiful walking along those empty beaches in the pouring rain and exploring the quiet towns of the West Coast but at the same time disappointing not to be able to photograph it in all its glory. Feeling a bit tired and over it all, I decided to make a last ditch attempt for some photos at Liffey Falls even if it was pouring with rain.

Taking the Photograph

The rain over the trip seemed relentless and upon arriving it was still constant even through the towering trees. Luckily for this photo I managed to find a nice little spot underneath a large rock slightly covered from the downpour. Being close to the waterfall created its own challenges with water from the waterfall creating a constant spray over my lens. I couldn’t escape the rain! But eventually after taking a photo, wiping the lens and repeating, I eventually got something without water spray all over the image. It was nice walking away from driving around 1200km over 4 days to walk away with one image I was happy with. Regardless thoughI would have probably been happy with nothing. Exploring the Tasmanian West Coast is a joy in itself. Such a beautiful part of the world. In case you’re interested, photos from this trip to the Tasmanian West Coast can be found in a previous post.

The image was captured with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40, manfrotto tripod and Hoya Circular Polariser with a 1 second exposure at f/18. Generally I’ll try to shoot a waterfall for a little longer but due to the constant spray from the waterfall I had to settle with a shorter exposure to get a photo without spray all over the lens.

[box]Interested to learn more about photographing waterfalls? Read my how to on photographing waterfalls here[/box]

Post Processing the Photograph

With the amount of spray coming off the waterfall it made the shoot quite the shoot and dash affair. With this in mind, I deliberately shot the image a little under exposed with the intention of pulling back detail in post. Generally shooting slightly under exposed is a good rule of thumb as it offers you a lot of flexibility in post as you are able to recover detail. Shooting over exposed and trying to recover detail is another story and not generally recommended.

Blending two exposures

With the image shot under exposed, I went about loading the image into Lightroom and exporting two images from the RAW. One at the normal exposure that the photo was shot at and another over exposed at +1.52.

The two images used for blending in Photoshop. One at a neutral exposure and another 1.52 stops over exposed
The two images used for blending in Photoshop. One at a neutral exposure and another +1.52 stops over exposed

The intention here was to use the over exposed image (+1.52) to bring out detail in areas that were quite dark in the original exposure in particular the foliage areas around the waterfall. Combining parts of the over exposed/second image was through the use of layer masks. I’ve written about the layer mask technique previously and funnily enough, the example image in the post is this photo from Liffey Falls so I’ll let that post do the talking.

Colour Correcting

The end result of blending the two images was recovering detail around the waterfall that was otherwise lost in the normal exposure. With the foliage recovered, I then went about making shifts to the red, green and blue colour channels via the curves tool.

In case you’re not familiar with the Curves tool, this gives you the ability to make adjustments to the shadows, midtones and highlights of an image. But for those seeking more control, you can select either the Red, Green or Blue channels and specifically just adjust the shadows of that channel of an image. It’s generally my go to when editing an image in terms of colour correction and changes to the dynamic range of an image.  For a quick look into the clip be sure to give this little clip about Photoshop Curves I put together. Not too sure what I was thinking in terms of song choice that day…

I wanted to give the foliage a boost to appear more green and vibrant. Using the curves tool, I made some aggressive changes to the green channel and used layer masks to restrict the changes to the foliage area of the image. This was to avoid introducing a strong green colour cast over the water in the image. With the change to the foliage done, I then went about making some subtle changes to the hue and saturation of the water.

Faking a bit of fog…

So this is where I’m potentially going to lose you… I thought when editing the image “Wow, how great would some fog look at the top of the waterfall? There was a little bit of fog from the rain and low hanging cloud but I must be honest – nothing to the effect as seen in the photograph.Ok so hopefully you’re still with me and I haven’t lost you after coming clean about the fog 😉 But in faking the fog it was actually super easy. Using the dodge brush, I used a mixture of dodging the highlights and midtones around the top of the waterfall gradually introducing it to give this effect.

Final Touches

With the image in a state that I was happy with I went about adding the final touches of selectively sharpening parts of the image using layer masks and some dodge/burning to parts of the image. This was the finished product.

Liffey Falls After

As always, feel free to send an email or leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback.

Don’t forget to give my Facebook Page a like to keep up to date with future posts from my blog or even give this post a like if you’re feeling generous 😉

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Thanks for reading,

– Alex

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Before and After – AAMI Park

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Aami Park 1 Aaami Park 2
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Capturing the Photo

Fireworks at AAMI Park as captured in 2011 during a sports game at one of Melbourne’s iconic sports venues.

After passing by it on my commute every day to work, I’d always wanted to capture a long exposure of the traffic going beneath the bridge with the stadium all lit up with a game being on. Timing for this photo was key where I wanted it to be a clear forecast so I could get a nice blue sky around blue hour.  I waited a few weekends where an event would be on but the forecast wasn’t really on my side. Eventually I got lucky with the forecast and luckily there was a time playing so decided to pounce. The plan was to arrive just on sunset to setup and capture an image around blue hour which would provide a nice even light over the scene and allow me to capture the lines from the constant flowing traffic beneath.

Various photos taken over the night.
Various photos taken over the night.

It was by luck that AAMI Park uses fireworks for when a team scores a goal. Even more lucky was that many a goals were being scored. I have to be honest – photographing fireworks isn’t my strong point and I really wanted to capture it in one image rather than blending the fireworks into the shot. Thanks to the fireworks going off every 5-10 minutes it let me get the right photo eventually in a 20 second exposure at F/13. For this photo I used the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40 and a tripod.

Processing the Image

The challenge for this photo (and something I find a lot when shooting night time) is battling the warm temperatures of the street lights. For this image, I could of edited it entirely in Lightroom by using the adjustment brush and saturation but I wanted a greater level of control over the image where I could make small-scale changes to a small selection without affecting the overall image.This is where I encourage the use of layer masks in Photoshop due to their ability to allow you to make selective changes to an image. Want to increase the saturation of just the reds of the traffic flowing past without increasing the saturation to other reds in your image? Layer masks is your answer.

[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]More information about layer masks and blending can be found in an earlier post about layer masks on my blog[/box]

Using layer masks on the bottom half of the image, I used a mixture of selective saturation changes, curves channel changes (adjusting the Red channel shadows and mid tones to reduce the red) and introducing a cold photo filter . I’m probably not 100% with the bottom half of the image but much prefer it over the original image where the lights create a high temperature over the scene.

With the high temperature traffic lights cooled down I then went about editing the sky and stadium. The changes here were quite simple and included:

  • Saturation boost and brightening the sky – With the intention of capturing the image on blue hour I really wanted to bring out the sky to emphasize the blue hour feel. The sky in the raw was quite flat (notice how the light drops off near the stadium lights) so I used the dodge feature in Photoshop to brighten the sky and to also bring out the fireworks more. With this done I then set about boosting the blues of the sky with a saturation mask
  • Colour correcting and brightening the stadium – As  I had the camera set to auto white balance, this left a warm and inconsistent colour temperature across the whole scene. To correct this, I set about creating a curves layer, opening the red channel and reducing the reds in the shadows and mid tones. The key here was to remove the reds from the stadium to make it appear its natural white colour. In addition to this, a saturation layer was created to lower the saturation of the stadium. Once again, a layer mask was used here for both layers to ensure the reduction to the red channel and saturation was only made to the stadium and not other parts to the scene. Once this was completed, I then went about dodging the stadium to brighten it
  • Straighten and perspective correction – I must admit, it’s rare that I’ll get my horizons 100% straight. Luckily it’s easy to quickly fix in Adobe Photoshop by selecting the ruler tool, running it along the horizon of the image and then selecting Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary. With this complete I also used the lens correction tool in Photoshop which corrects distortion based on your lens profile. This can be found in Filter > Lens Correction

And that’s it really. For this image the most important thing was getting as much correct in camera as possible. Sure the colour balance could have been set to manual to avoid having to re-correct in post but through getting the fireworks and everything in one shot made post processing a lot easier.

Hope this post was useful for you and as usual if you have any questions or feedback I’d always love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading,

– Alex