On my previous trip to Pulau Mawar in Mersing, I managed to capture this angle of another sea stack with the glorious milky way on its background. This angle is very near to the small little cave located on the left side of the “arch” formation. While the whole team (about 10-12 of them photographers) were busy shooting the arch formation angle, I went deeper to the left side, nearer to the little cave to capture this angle.
Finding the right composition was tricky as it was very dark and I could not plant my tripod properly due to the slippery rocky terrain. Took me quite a while to finally compose this frame and set my camera settings. I took my first 10 frames, reviewed them visually… then suddenly I heard some rattling sound coming from above the cave. Without wasting any second, I grabbed all my stuff and quickly moved back to the team. Ooookay, I admit, that was a bit scary. My initial plan was to do 50 frames there, but I guess 10 frames will suffice.
So, let me bring you guys to the steps that I’ll be going through to make this photo. First off, let’s see how the raw file is by exporting it straight out from the camera without any edit in Photoshop or Lightroom. Take note of the digital noise all over the sky area.
And below here is the stacked version using sequator software. Noise is significantly reduced. This will be used as my base layer.
If you can’t see the difference clearly, let me put them both side by side (zoomed in too) and you be the judge yourself. Even though it’s only 10 photos stacked, you can see it made quite a lot of difference… although I believe if given 50 photos stacked will yield even better result.
Next, is to tackle the dark foreground. In the 10 photos that I stacked, there is one frame where some random flashlights were captured lighting some of the rocks and sea stack in front. Here’s the photo below.
Using Photoshop, I blended in the foreground with the base layer… and corrected the random harsh flashlight on the rocks. Here’s what it looks like below after the blend. Instead of pure black on the foreground, now you can see some details on the rocks.
After this, I will do my usual color and contrast correction in Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro 4 (CEP4) and some curve adjustment layers to bring out more details of the milky way. Below is what it looks like so far.
Lastly, I removed some of the green color cast on the left, added tiny bit of warm overall and also soften the sky area… to give the milky way a slight diffused look to it. Here’s the final result below.
Shot with XT4 + XF 10-24mm F4 @ 10mm
Foreground – F4 | ISO 1600 | 30sec
Sky – F4 | ISO 6400 | 10photos x 30sec
