I took this photo last year in Reykjavik, Iceland on the very last night of my 8 day stay. I was standing next to the road by a streetlamp, not an ideal place to be shooting the night sky, but I didn't have much choice. I had tried every night of my trip to see the Northern Lights, but this was the best opportunity of the week. All I could see without my camera was a gray cloud that kept moving. I used my iPhone's long exposure to determine there was an aurora, then set up my camera and tripod. There were ducks swimming around below, and I had to remove all of their trails in my long exposure. This was taken at 21 seconds, F4, ISO 400. I did a LOT of post-processing! Darkened the rocks, straightened, lightened the mountains, darkened the city lights, brightened the stars, used LR denoise, adjusted contrast and exposure. See the original. What do you think about the crop? Anything you'd change? Thanks!
2 comments posted
Don Hill
Hey Janice, Iceland is on my bucket list. I think the rocks in the foreground are a total distraction. Northern lights are the main subject here. I am not sure if the horizon is straight. I did warm up the temperature in Adobe Camera Raw, and did some adjustments to bring out the stars. I used Topaz DeNoise AI to sharpen. This is a very hard shot to make and most people never actually see this kind of sky in real life. I would keep playing with this and then... up on the wall it goes. Thanks for sharing. Posted: 11/05/2025 07:23:01
Julie Deer
Hi Janice, You have done a great job with the post processing. The rocks in the foreground add a visual element, but if you do get rid of them consider a panorama shaped image only leaving a small amount of the dark water. The aurora is definitely the hero in the image. I laughed when I saw the duck trails in the original. They were very busy! Posted: 11/06/2025 03:24:40
