So, following yesterday's entirely genuine post, let me follow up with something rare for me - something where I have done significant Photoshop 'playing' to produce something substantially different from what was...
First, a little explaining. This château is lit up until 2am a variety of garish and ever-changing colours. This means that taking back-to-back shots and stacking them for star trails leads to some rather odd effects. In the sky and on the building, I was able to minimise this through a combination of colour balance, curves and the like - and, in the case of the building, overlaying a single frame with nice lighting. But, in the water area, the movement of the surface (with its consequent scattering of the light) meant that the colours and patterns were all over the place - in a way that interfered with the reflected star trails. So there was no way in which I could get rid of the messy lighting effect and still have genuine reflected trails. Well, apart from re-starting my shoot at 2am - which, on this occasion, I couldn't do.
So, with the picture posted yesterday, I simply accepted I wasn't going to have reflected trails - and used the static shot for that area too. This absence of star reflections often happens anyway with water in motion, when the reflections aren't distinct enough to show up. So it looks convincing. But, being an obsessive, it bothered me! So, I set out to create the reflected scene as well as I could.
And this is what you see here...
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By the way, for anyone who doubts that reflected star trails really happen, take a look at these shots. There's no jiggery pokery here - it's entirely genuine:
StarTrailsFromFilesIMGP5778-5977(PlusDarkFrameFile5980)_St? | Flickr StarTrailsFromFiles_IMG1348-1855Step11CropSMALL | Ed Hurst | Flickr StarTailsFromFiles_IMG0739-1310Step9sRGBSMALL | Ed Hurst | Flickr PanoFromStarTrails(IMGP9499-9585)PlusForegroundFramesStep7? | Flickr