Night Fisherman on the Ocean

Comments welcome, nearly a full moon when I took this, I am happy that

fishermen don't move much.

Very good composition -- nice choice for placement of the horizon line.  This looks almost like day, but there may be no other choice:  photographing the night is quite difficult.

Wait.  I just tried darkening it considerably with a simple curves adjustment, and it is possible to get it to look much more like a night shot.  You have a fair amount of light in the foreground, behind the two fishermen (fortunately), to the left, and in the clouds.  The darkest area is the sea to the right and the structure on which the fishermen are standing.  Darkening changes the nature of the photograph considerably, but if you like that different nature, it can work.  As expected, not as much detail is seen, although more structure is revealed in the clouds.

Hello Stephen thanks for stopping by, what I normally do for a night exposure is set a 2.8 lens to iso 6400 and then calculate my way back for f stop I want to use. The light in the original picture is very patchy, the moon is to the side of me and there were a couple of boats out shrimping on the water, I don't mind a surreal look to my pictures in fact my leaning is that way, I will be honest with you I have wondered at times why a few of my night shots are so light, I do shoot in very dark places, very little light available.

Simon, a camera can turn night into day with a sufficiently long exposure.  It just depends on how you want to present your night (or dark) exposure.  When I first did this, I was fascinated with the light-gathering ability of the camera.  Later, I was able to get some moon-lit photos that really looked like moon-lit photos.  This is one where the photographer has a lot of control.

I think that control is a lot easier when more light is available as in this shot

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=14761492 but you almost end up with a tonemapped type image when the scene is this dark, there is little leeway to get a darker image without it looking drab in photoshop with this one. I have actually updated this shot a little but i am not sure how to post it in this window.

Simon, the link you included looks much more like night, IMO, and I think you did a good job.  

You can attach a photo to a post like this if it is sufficiently small.  They've changed the criteria recently, but I make a photo that's about 500 pixels on the longest side, 72ppi, and have it residing on my desktop (or hard drive).  When you post a response, immediately after posting the system will ask if you have an image to attach to the post, at which point you simply follow the instructions, navigate to where your photo is residing, upload it, give it a caption, and you're set.

I've done this with a night photo (well after midnight) I took at a rocky shore on the Olympic Peninsula in WA state.  It's the reflections on the rocks that I think make this work.

So you metered the moon reflections that's an unusual shot I have done that with sunset reflections on the water before as they love to blow out. I'm really getting into night photography, you never know what you will get back with the long exposures, well you have an idea ;-)

This is the new edit, i have toned down the foreground a little too, i think it looks better for darkening down a bit so I appreciate the input.

A very fine image.  I couldn't care less whether the representation matches the nighttime luminescences or contrasts, as the aesthetic effect is all that is important for this viewer. It is very good, tonally, emotionally, and has a wonderful sense of scale of nature versus that of humans (I have seen similar types of views made in the Canadian high arctic, and I think one was in the film about Glenn Gould and Bach, "32 short films...").  I disagree that darkening down the image improves it, at least aesthetically, in fact to the contrary, but then that is just a subjective appreciation.