Straight Up
Death Valley California -
That shot has been quite a hard one to get.
this color balance is in my opinion perfectly as i wanted it. A blueish night tone, and some yellow warmer soft light casted on the cactus, reminding the milky way tones, and to do so, it is quite an amazing process.
The composition is simple, straight up in your face.
It is composed of 2 different shots. One on F11, to capture sharp spikes of the cactus, and surprisingly, shot in early morning. That did allow me to have an exposure of about 1 second, enough to lower my ISO, and minimize de noise.
The second one is taken at night, focused on the milky way, on 20 seconds opening and 2.0.
The color balance was significantly different, and by pulling the cactus shot toward blue and colder temperatures, lower overall exposure, the blending just did fit on top.