A True Day|Night Backdrop With the Summer Moon
With so many going on vacation, getting the last days down the shore before the kids go back to school, the end of summer always slows dramatically. With some extra time on our hands, this makes a great occasion to produce personal and stock work. So when all of the factors for a true day|night landscape fell into place this past September, I jumped at the chance and headed over to Valley Forge National Park to set up the camera.
Usually when producing a landscape, we generate the night version from the day since so many conditions are needed for the true night version. First, you can not have any wind, all day, since this would ensure the day and night will not line up due to the vegetation moving. Not to mention, wind would also create motion blur in the longer night captures. Next, with no sources of light, you require a full moon to keep the exposures from getting ridiculously long. Even so, five minutes (times eight captures) is average for a full moon night shot. Weather not only needs to be good, but cloud free to ensure the moonlight is not obscured. Last, you have to wait until two hours after sunset, when the sky turns black, before capturing the night images.
I arrived around 4 PM to set up and start capturing the day version. However the light was very harsh at this time, so I ended using a variation captured just after sunset, at 8 PM, for the day image. It was not until 10 PM that I was able to start the night captures, which took about 45 minutes. When I got back to the studio the next day, I had the two images below.
As you can see, the skies were not ideal. I had the obvious orange hue in the day image that occurs at sunset, and the indigo sky with star streaks you get with long exposures at night. I opted to replace both skies; the day with a blue gradient and the night with stock.
Even with the conditions being ideal, we did get some movements of leaves and such with it being most evident in the foreground. So I created a night image from the day and blended in them together just to ensure we had perfect registration from day to night.
At this point the night version was coming together but still needed some final touches. The image was a little muted, so I painted in brighter patches throughout the field and in the distance. To give some life, I added a touch of smoke above the chimneys and an orange glow around two of the windows in the old farm house. Last, I evened out and added a slight gradient to the sky, giving us the image below.
Although we could certainly take this further, such as adding in a couple of oil lamps to the path or perhaps a campfire over the hill, giving it more nuance, I opted to end here and move the image into the stock catalog. After all, we can always add those items in at the behest of the client.