Lunar Eclipse over Orion

Mentioned in this post, an image of the lunar eclipse in its relation to other celestial bodies. Now that I’ve had some time to look over the images, I think that this is my favorite of the evening.  But it took some work.

One interesting thing: the street lights are all effectively done with tungsten lighting – they give everything a solid color cast.  But the moon & the stars – they’re reflecting what is effectively normal sunlight.  Completely different cast.

If you color balance for daylight (I usually have it at 5600K), then the street lights are orange, but the moon is proper.  Balance for tungsten and the moon is drab.

The solution: smart objects in Photoshop.  One for the main area, one for the sky.  Each one with a different color balance.  The original was created in RAW, so this didn’t damage the image.  Minor masking & everything displays as it should.

Does Orion look too bright?  It should, and it’s deliberate.  Several curve layers spiking the intensity there, just to bring ‘em out.  It’s almost overpowering on a large view, but when you look at a smaller view the stars disappear.  This preserves those stars in thumbnails.

Other post-processing: two-pass sharpening on the trees, and a mild blur/ghosting to the tree/snow areas. That was to bring out the calm/softness of the snow, while retaining sharp edges.

Oh, and this is cropped.  I was shivering so much when setting this up on the tripod that it came out crooked.