Fighting Moose in Grand Teton National Park
by Scho

Comment by Art Roflmao:
Fantastic! 9

Fighting Moose in Grand Teton National Park
by Scho

Comment by MaryO:
Great capture!

Fighting Moose in Grand Teton National Park
by Scho

Comment by Lydia:
Way cool!

Fighting Moose in Grand Teton National Park
by Scho

Comment by GeorgesBogaert:
Oh my dear... Such a powerful picture. Don't want to interfere with those moose. A 9 from me.

Southern Crested Caracara, Patagonia
by Scho

Comment by Bear_Music:
Damn, those voters are getting tough :-( Brilliant shot, Bro!

Southern Crested Caracara, Patagonia
by Scho

Comment by jomari:
Beautiful shot!

Mt.-Bachelor-reflected-in-Todd-Lake
by Scho

Comment by Scho:

Originally posted by tate: a crowd pleaser - no doubt. Can't wait to see the settings / method on this one. Very nice.

Thank you for your nice comments. You requested an explanation of how this was created, here it is: The camera settings were f/2.8, 25 seconds with ISO of 2500. I copied the raw image into Lightroom (LR). I made a virtual copy of the image and used the Basic Panel in LR to process one copy to optimize the sky and the other copy to optimize the foreground and Lake. I then took both copies into Photoshop (PS) as layers and using a luminosity mask, blended the two copies together to utilize the sky from one and the foreground from the other. I then used 2 different lights luminosity masks to lighten the Milky Way; a lights luminosity mask to lighten the mountain; and a lights luminosity mask to slightly darken the reflection; a used a curves adjustment to lighten the image, covered it with a black mask and painted in those portions of the Milky Way that I wanted to lighten further; I used a rough selection of the mountain and lightened with a curves adjustment; I used a darks luminosity mask to darken portions of the sky and reflection; I used one color balance layer; I used Nik Color Efex Pro (Darken/Lighten Center) to create a slight vignette; I finished by merging all layers into one (Cmd/Option/Shift/e), performed noise reduction on that layer with the Imagemonic Noise Reduction Plug-in and then used a luminosity mask to apply the noise reduction only to the darkest parts of the image. Thats probably more than you want to know - but there it is. Feel free to follow-up with any questions that you might have.

Mt.-Bachelor-reflected-in-Todd-Lake
by Scho

Comment by Scho:
Thank you for your nice comments. For those who requested an explanation of how this was created, here it is: The camera settings were f/2.8, 25 seconds with ISO of 2500. I copied the raw image into Lightroom (LR). I made a virtual copy of the image and used the Basic Panel in LR to process one copy to optimize the sky and the other copy to optimize the foreground and Lake. I then took both copies into Photoshop (PS) as layers and using a luminosity mask, blended the two copies together to utilize the sky from one and the foreground from the other. I then used 2 different lights luminosity masks to lighten the Milky Way; a lights luminosity mask to lighten the mountain; and a lights luminosity mask to slightly darken the reflection; a used a curves adjustment to lighten the image, covered it with a black mask and painted in those portions of the Milky Way that I wanted to lighten further; I used a rough selection of the mountain and lightened with a curves adjustment; I used a darks luminosity mask to darken portions of the sky and reflection; I used one color balance layer; I used Nik Color Efex Pro (Darken/Lighten Center) to create a slight vignette; I finished by merging all layers into one (Cmd/Option/Shift/e), performed noise reduction on that layer with the Imagemonic Noise Reduction Plug-in and then used a luminosity mask to apply the noise reduction only to the darkest parts of the image. Thats probably more than you want to know - but there it is. Feel free to follow-up with any questions that you might have.

Mt.-Bachelor-reflected-in-Todd-Lake
by Scho

Comment by Bear_Music:
There ya go again! Do us a favor and give a detailed exegesis on how this was created?

Mt.-Bachelor-reflected-in-Todd-Lake
by Scho

Comment by PenelopeK:
Wonderful!
ETA: Congratulations. I love the composition, especially how the shorter band of light looks like it is emanating from the top of the mountain.

Message edited by author 2016-08-08 11:01:00.