Palouse Falls and the Milky Way

So beautiful, like a magical place for a lovely story. Wonderful, Ryan, congrats!

Mari 

Ryan,

Wonderful exposure!

Regards always,

Jim j.

Great concept well executed.  I might be tempted to make the sky a bit less green/red and more blue or black?

Thanks everyone, The green and magenta you see in the image is called Airglow. This is a natural phenomenon. From Wiki: "Airglow is caused by various processes in the upper atmosphere, such as the recombination of ions which were photoionized by the sun during the day, luminescence caused by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere, and chemiluminescence caused mainly by oxygen and nitrogen reacting with hydroxyl ions at heights of a few hundred kilometers." Ry

That may be true but, "the airglow at night may be bright enough to be noticed by an observer, and is generally bluish in color."  I've yet to see a natural green night sky, although camera sensors often see things differently then our eyes.

Great image and technical accomplishment. I would expect much more movement of stars with a 7 minute exposure.  

This is two exposures. The first shot was 7 minutes @ f/3.5 ISO 2000. This exposure allowed me to capture as much detail as possible for the canyon. The upper canyon walls are over 400 feet above me causing it to be very dim. Once my eyes adjusted to the starlight the scene looked like this. The second shot for the stars was 30 seconds @ f/3.5 ISO 5000.

Using layers the star exposure was on top and exposure of the canyon on the bottom. I created a simple mask of the under exposed canyon then removed it revealing the correct exposure layer beneath. Since I over exposed the rocks wanting to capture as much detail as possible I used a curves layer to underexpose to a more nature dimness then desaturated it for a more natural look. Without the curves and saturation layer adjustments the image looked surreal and more unnatural. Last step was a subtle color balance.

To capture this scene it took over 15 minutes because of the dark frame subtraction removing unwanted extra noise double the original exposure. I used a wireless remote to ensure the cables weren't blowing in the wind. One last note I slightly changed the noise processing for the canyon detail by increasing luminance noise removal causing the canyon to be less grainy.

When I first reached Palouse Falls 12 photographers were around the top photographing down into the canyon. Some were using giant flashlights light painting the falls. It looked too unnatural for me and I was already planning to shoot from the bottom because of my past experience there. About 12:30am everyone had left leaving only myself climbing on the canyon walls. It was a fun night for me. When the conditions come together again I want to try it again. Ry

Thanks for the details.  Again, a great technical accomplishment.  Great work, Ryan.

Sorry I may have rated a 6 but it is a 7/7.

Ryan,

  Wow...breathtaking image with amazing lighting.  Thanks for sharing.  Take care, Patsy

great capture. i really like this perspective on the falls. everyone seem to shoot it from above, but I really like ur take on it.

Perfect!

Thanks for the detailed explaination, all your hard night work paid off on this one! One of the best shots I've seen of this waterfall.