These are carvings made by the Ute Indians ~200-300 years ago who lived in the region of Arches National Park, near Moab Utah. The foreground consists of around 5 shots taken at ISO 1600, f/2.8, 20 secs and light painted with a simple white LED flashlight. The blue color was obtained using white balance adjustments and the "glow" of the petroglyphs came from these adjustments as well as contrast adjustments (all edits made in Lightroom at this point). The star trails are around 60 shots taken at ISO 3200, f/2.8, 30 secs each in the same spot on the same night. These were first edited in Lightroom and exported as JPEG's, then stacked using a freeware program called StarStax which also created the comet tails on the stars. These stacked star trails were combined with the light painted foreground images in Photoshop, where various other exposure adjustments were made.

As a note: this was shot behind barriers erected by the park. I didn't harm or touch the rocks/carvings in any way and these are also facing a parking lot that remains very active at night (car headlights are constantly shining on the etchings), so my flashlight likely did no worse damage than the bombardments of car headlights that it receives nightly.

[RubyT]

Nominated.

[Rob1000]

Nominated. If any of these photos are composites this one surely counts, splendid effort