Star Trails with Barn in foreground

[wsbII]

Hello,
So this is my first attempt at a full stacked set star trails shot. I was up in the north woods of WI this past week and this shot is from the second night (first night I tried this the lens completely fogged up and nothing worked). The shot is 209 stacked shots (using CS4 - statistics maximum level). All shots were at 400ISO, f4, 30 seconds long. The barn was light painted on one of the last exposures so I could add back in with a layer mask.

I know I have a "blip" in the trail near the end since I light painted the barn with 2 of the 30 second exposures and it left a 1 minute gap and I should have not included the last point. Other than that I'm looking for critique on two major items. The composition was intention with the placement of the barn. I was trying to line up the north star with the upper left corner of the barn and obviously can't tell where the north star is. I actually think it did work out and did not negatively impact the composition - thoughts? Also, the coloration of the shot. I was trying to have some background color (not just dark sky) and the set of shots was taken with the moon coming up about 30 minutes before the end so the ground was lighting up slightly and the horizon line added some light to the shot. The lighter background and the red of the barn I think work well together. Thoughts? Is the coloration OK? Thanks in advance for your insights.
Bill



Startrails at the chippewa flowage | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[crockny]

Interesting shot! I can't see much of the barn on my monitor - could be a tad lighter. Also the barn looks crooked - straightening it might help. I like the idea ... nice star trails

[mpaulison]

Excellent. I can actually see the whole barn nicely. I would suggest just a little contrast, either with unsharp mast at 20-250-0 or some other means. It seems a little flat. To me that would make it perfect. But excellent image!

[kaa]

Interesting shot. Good thing you mentioned the technique you used to stack up multiple shots of 30 seconds. Gives me many ideas for such a shot. Can you elaborate on the processing you did in Photoshop? I assume by "stacking up" you mean blending each shot in different layer. What mode did you use to get this effect?

[John Hendry]

Nice shot, its great when all the hard work results in a great image.

All the best

[wsbII]

Thanks for the comments everyone. The more I've looked at this shot the more flaws I find,but that just means there is room to improve on the next shot.

kaa - the technique used in photoshop (CS4) is the method explained by Harold Davis in a book from a few years ago. THe stacking is simply using the statistics function (under the file********s section) It asks you which files to include (select as many as you want) and what method to process the images by. Davis suggests "maximum" so I used that for the shot, but there are many options (some day I'll try them out). One you make that selection you pretty much hit "ok" and after some processing time the shot is all "stacked". Pretty easy actually.

mpaulison - thanks for the advice on the contrast. I'l give it a shot and see the impact. I wonder if bumping the reds a bit and a little more saturation would help, but I know that's a fine line.

Thanks again everyone for the advice and comments!
Bill