Tennessee Night

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Found this photo searching for something else. I took it about a year ago. It is rural and quiet. I darkened the driveway and tree. Also removed a colored haze from around the moon and corner in Lightroom. Handheld shot.

[Wavelength]

An excellent image; i desired if the fluorescent reflection on the human face were changed to incandescence

[Marwus]

Nice picture.

[Manfred M]

I find that night shots are very demanding of the photographer and challenging to pull off because of the high dynamic range in that shooting situation. Blue hour is a lot easier to work with, but unfortunately is quite short.

I'm not loving the white balance / colour temperature you are using and find that there is too much negative space.

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Thank you, Manfred. I agree with the white balance being off. Did some Auto corrections. Have been trying to remove the red haze near the moon. I made a selection of the area but don't know exactly how to proceed to do it.

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[DanK]

If I understand right, the red area was caused by using an auto correction. That also created odd lighting in general. I wouldn't use anything auto. The computer algorithms in the auto function are almost certainly not based on night photography. That's probably why it increased the brightness of the driveway, which is a bad change.

Both the high dynamic range and the very large difference in color temperatures between the exterior and interior light make this sort of image very tough. I'm guessing that this was illuminated either by old car headlights or a sodium vapor street light.

The first thing I would do is cool the temperature to get rid of the yellow color cast. I'd then burn the left and bottom because I would want the viewer's attention to be on the man rather than the driveway. I'd then try to warm up the color of the light coming from inside. To do this, you create a color balance layer with a black mask and paint white on the mask where you want the change to happen. I fiddled for a few minutes and came up with this:

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comments. Auto WB tends to have limitations, especially at very low (below 3500K) and very high (above 8000K) colour temperatures. Doing this manually in the raw convertor is a good start.

Night images tend to be a bit tricky as part of the subject can be illuminated by artificial light (like the house and grass) while the sky is influenced by reflected sunlight by the moon; something we refer to as "mixed lighting". Separating the two using layer masks is one approach that does a reasonably good good job blending these two light sources. The fastest and easiest fid is to go to a B&W image.

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Thank you, Dan. You're a very good fiddler. Lighting comes from a street light on the electric pole. Do you think lightenig the moon would help image? And maybe adding a few stars? I like the direction you pointd out. Will work on it.

[DanK]

Lighting comes from a street light on the electric pole

Makes sense. Almost certainly a sodium vapor lamp. They are becoming less common--they are being replaced by LEDs--but for years, that tell-tale yellow cast was a give-away.


You could try lightening the moon. I didn't try that.

[escape]

+1 to Dan's comments. Auto WB tends to have limitations, especially at very low (below 3500K) and very high (above 8000K) colour temperatures. Doing this manually in the raw convertor is a good start.

Night images tend to be a bit tricky as part of the subject can be illuminated by artificial light (like the house and grass) while the sky is influenced by reflected sunlight by the moon; something we refer to as "mixed lighting". Separating the two using layer masks is one approach that does a reasonably good job blending these two light sources. The fastest and easiest fid is to go to a B&W image.

I Will try your quick-fix solution, b/w. Will also look into your other suggestions. Need to s[end more time finding my way in photo shop. Thank you.

[Manfred M]

Just a quick look at the image. I worked from your original post as I found the moon and foreground far too hot and distracting in the second version.

In this image, I pulled out most of the yellow and some of the red (Photoshop Hue / Saturation Adjustment) working with the red and yellow "channels" rather than the default "Master" selection.






In this second one, converting to B&W solves all the colour issues.

[escape]

Thanks, Manfred. I like both renditions.
This is more like what I wanted to do. Keep the moon prominent, remove red haze and add stars. I think the coloring has improved but not as nice as yours.