Photoshop Saves The Night
In The Field
As I look ahead at the forecast for the next 10 days, I see 9 days of clouds or rain. My motivation has already been waning and this certainly doesn’t help. I’ve now been skunked on four outings in my 2022 Astronomy Photo Plan this spring due to weather.
My latest adventure was no exception. The forecast was finally looking clear for the evening of the Eta Aquarids, a minor meteor shower. I had a plan in place that I would shoot over Vibernum Falls. I wanted to get the falls in my foreground with a view to the southeast sky to capture the milky way core, so I needed to follow a snowmobile trail along the north side of the Whiteshell River
It was only about 2.2km from where I parked my car to the falls, but the hike was anything but smooth going. Much of the trail was hard packed snow, however large areas were flooded and I quickly took water, ice and snow in my boots. At times I was trying to jump from tree to tree making the assumption that the water would be more shallow at the trunk.
When I got to the falls, there was a rest area and a rotted picnic table. I had to walk through some thick bush, but wasn’t able to get an unobstructed view of the falls or a clear view of the sky. There were some rapids above the falls that only exist because of the extremely high water levels on the river. From here, I could get a view of the open sky, however I was confined to a couple square meters of rock to stand on.
Immediately I knew I wouldn’t have much flexibility and it would be a long night in that one spot. The bush was thick and I wasn’t excited about the prospect of navigating it in the dark.
In my mind, the outing had already failed. I had a shot list, and I knew I would only be able to achieve one of them from this location. I knew that my south to north milky way pano would not be possible due to obstruction on the horizon. I would not have enough space to set up for a self portrait under the stars. Finally, I would not be able to use Vibernum Falls as my foreground.
I made a quick decision to snap a quick blue hour composition of the rapids, then hike out while there was still a little bit of light out. My intention was to make the best of the night by at least capturing some unique foreground, then compositing in a night sky I shot a month and a half earlier in March.
Photoshop To The Rescue
Ultimately, I tried a few other locations in the vicinity without much luck then headed home. There were some clouds starting to roll in and I called it quits. Since the milky way photo I took in March was from the same spring, it was in roughly the same position that it would have been had I stayed at Vibernum Falls. Had I stayed and photographed the milky way that night, I am confident it would have looked more or less the same. I don’t have many qualms about this sort of thing since it's really the foreground that matters most. I could have stopped anywhere along the way home and shot the milky way from a random field, but it would probably make for a boring photograph.
I do a lot of work in Photoshop where I developed the skills to replace a sky. As it turns out, not only did this save a photo, it saved a whole outing from disaster. It allowed me to walk away from the evening and still have something to show for it.
I decided I was going to work with a Milky Way photo I had taken in late March. While I don’t mind compositing astro images, I still do like to try to keep a certain degree of realism. The Milky Way tracks across the sky as the night progresses, so exact position really isn’t that critical. Taking the photo from March, the core is still towards the southeast so it's roughly the same as if I had just stayed next to the falls all night.
The Results
In the end, I think the photo turned out quite nice. The composition was still pretty nice with the rapids in the foreground. I had enough sky to get a wide view of the Milky Way in there. The flow is coming almost right at you. Some nice lines to lead you into the image.
