Pre dawn beneath Mt San Gorgonio

This was a 60 sec. exposure which caused the stars to streak. Are they too distracting?

Comments welcome as usual.

Edit: Star streaks now fixed...and moon put back in.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …66040953@N03/10​480917464/

Really love this. Colors and mood are excellent! But IMHO the star streaks do detract from this really nice image.

Thanks. I'll have to look at the image at a very high magnification to see how difficult it would be to remove the stars. The larger ones won't be a problem...it's the little buggers I'll have to think about.

Nice photo, I'm really digging the tones on the mountain. Stars would have looked nicer as dots or as bigger trails. Definitely worth returning there if that's not too inconvenient. Or you could cheat and in paste another sky.

Maybe crop out a tiny bit of foreground, too. The road and the bright grass are distracting.

jefzor wrote in post #16399145
Nice photo, I'm really digging the tones on the mountain. Stars would have looked nicer as dots or as bigger trails. Definitely worth returning there if that's not too inconvenient. Or you could cheat and in paste another sky.

Maybe crop out a tiny bit of foreground, too. The road and the bright grass are distracting.

Thanks. There was also a quarter moon in the original image that I removed since it was elongated as well. The location is just down the road a piece so a revisit wouldn't be a problem. I have some faster glass now so that might be just the ticket.

I actually like the bright grass (weeds) and (dirt) road as I think it helps add some depth. No light painting done on the grass either, that's just the way the light was falling on it.

Just messin around with LR.

Nice, and yes, that does look better. I'll get busy on the original shortly. Thanks.

I've now replaced the blurred stars and put the moon back in the correct position. The brightest star on the right is Venus.

Very nice Gene! Really like the included Moon. Well done.

Very nice, I like the colors. For me the light bleed from the hills is a high negative.

Your edit of the stars and moon is excellent.

Titus213 wrote in post #16401980
Very nice, I like the colors. For me the light bleed from the hills is a high negative.

Your edit of the stars and moon is excellent.

Thanks David. I'm not sure what light bleed you're referring to as being negative...and a high one at that. Do you mean the glow of lights from the city of Hemet between the viewer and San Gorgonio? I actually like the colors it brings out, otherwise everything would look like it does on the right side of the image.

navydoc wrote in post #16402037
Thanks David. I'm not sure what light bleed you're referring to as being negative...and a high one at that. Do you mean the glow of lights from the city of Hemet between the viewer and San Gorgonio? I actually like the colors it brings out, [I]otherwise everything would look like it does on the right side of the image[/I].

Yup, that would look better.....

love the colours....

^^Thanks.

David, here's how the image might look if the lighting were consistant all the way accross like it is on the right side of the original. Ignore the details, I just used content aware scale to expand the right side to fill all the way accross the image as a test. Personally, I prefer the original with the glow of city lights as I think that adds to the colors rather than distract...but that's just me.

Besides, I can't very well turn off the city lights anyway.

OK, if you removed all of the foreground lights that's what it would look like. I didn't say I didn't like the foreground lights I said I didn't like all that light bleeding up from the city.