Behold a Pale Land, Part 2
Behold a Pale Land, Part 2: This is a follow up to my last post. The last post was how I saw this scene in my mind’s eye (second image), and the appearance of the night sky people might expect, with the smoke and all. Today’s post is the sky that appeared in my camera’s LCD screen at the time. The green is airglow in the high atmosphere and is very commonly seen in dark locations (frequently waged out or obscured in light polluted areas). I have darkened the upper sky here, otherwise unchanged. Same exposure factors as the last post. Low Level Lightning was used. Note: The colors of the shy can appear different with the camera set at different White Balances. Here the camera was set at a White Balance of 4200K. ____________________________________ If you set your camera at a lower WB of like 3600K then the sky would get more blue, and the airglow might look more cyan. Shooting at a lower WB can turn the airglow into a pretty cyan color, but I don’t find cyan to look very natural at night. If you see photos with beautiful cyan skies this this is likely the was it was achieved. It’s a way to get rid of the green if you desire. ___________________________________ If you shoot with a higher camera White Balance, like 5000-5500K, then the skies get a look more yellow and the airglow turns a very yellow-green color, much more yellowish. ____________________________________ So why do I go to the trouble to talk about this at all? Well, I’m trying to educate non photographers about what they are looking at. I look at thousands of night photos and I frequently see the comment “that’s photoshopped”!!! Well folks, they are virtually ALL photoshopped, lol. The colors of the night sky can be wild and they are mostly out of our range of perception because our night vision is predominantly black and white. The more a night sky photo looks “normal “ to us, the more it was likely photoshopped, lol. When photographers leave the sky unaltered, it will look MORE photoshopped, and vice versa. Making a night sky look “normal” frequently means photoshopping the image.
Behold a Pale Land, Part 2
Behold a Pale Land, Part 2: This is a follow up to my last post. The last post was how I saw this scene in my mind’s eye (second image), and the appearance of the night sky people might expect, with the smoke and all. Today’s post is the sky that appeared in my camera’s LCD screen at the time. The green is airglow in the high atmosphere and is very commonly seen in dark locations (frequently waged out or obscured in light polluted areas). I have darkened the upper sky here, otherwise unchanged. Same exposure factors as the last post. Low Level Lightning was used. Note: The colors of the shy can appear different with the camera set at different White Balances. Here the camera was set at a White Balance of 4200K. ____________________________________ If you set your camera at a lower WB of like 3600K then the sky would get more blue, and the airglow might look more cyan. Shooting at a lower WB can turn the airglow into a pretty cyan color, but I don’t find cyan to look very natural at night. If you see photos with beautiful cyan skies this this is likely the was it was achieved. It’s a way to get rid of the green if you desire. ___________________________________ If you shoot with a higher camera White Balance, like 5000-5500K, then the skies get a look more yellow and the airglow turns a very yellow-green color, much more yellowish. ____________________________________ So why do I go to the trouble to talk about this at all? Well, I’m trying to educate non photographers about what they are looking at. I look at thousands of night photos and I frequently see the comment “that’s photoshopped”!!! Well folks, they are virtually ALL photoshopped, lol. The colors of the night sky can be wild and they are mostly out of our range of perception because our night vision is predominantly black and white. The more a night sky photo looks “normal “ to us, the more it was likely photoshopped, lol. When photographers leave the sky unaltered, it will look MORE photoshopped, and vice versa. Making a night sky look “normal” frequently means photoshopping the image.