Finding New Ways to Shoot & Edit Your Nightscapes

Two weeks ago, I invited Stephen Clayson to go out with me to the Ward Charcoal Ovens in Nevada to re-photograph an image I had done in October 2012 for National Geographic. My favorite photo from our recent trip was Stephen's above perspective.

These 30-feet (9 m) high ovens reduced charcoal from local pinyon pine and Juniper from 1876 through 1879 for the smelting of silver at the Ward Mining District, just a few miles to the north.

Below, is the 2012 photo of mine that NatGeo published. It was a cloudy night, and I now wanted to revisit this location with a clearer view of the Milky Way.

My shot for NatGeo in 2012

Our efforts and planning were rewarded with a beautiful, clear night, along with patches of green airglow and a much better MW core alignment. Below, is the recent shot I took from almost the exact tripod location that I used in 2012 (note the "keystone" distortion (caused by tilting wide angle lenses) correction that has been made to the two ovens on the left side):

My most recent photo: September 2025

Stephen set up two cameras — one next to me, and a second to my left, and closer to the ovens. That perspective is the one shown in this post's title image — which I think is a more dramatic viewpoint. I wish I'd done the something similar, but I was too busy trying to redo my 2012 perspective — a reminder to stay openminded to new ideas and not be so ridged in your plans!

The rest of this post will show you how we lit, exposed and processed our images (compared to what I did 13 years ago). If you are one of my supporting patrons, you'll automatically see all that additional information below.

My 2012 EXIF: Canon 5D Mark III with a EF24mm f/1.4L II USM • Single Exposure • f/2.8, 13 sec, ISO 8000 • with Low Level Lighting (inside and outside the ovens) during all 13 seconds.

Our 2025 EXIF: Both Stephen and I are using astro-modified (Visible + H-alpha) cameras, modified by Spencer's Camera. His is a Nikon D-850 with a Nikkor f/2.8 14-24mm lens @14mm. Mine is Canon R6 with a Rokinon 14mm f/2.4 SP.

Both of us shot a stack of 20 exposures (f/2.8, 15 sec, ISO 6400) of the sky, with the foreground and ovens lit with Low Level Lighting (LLL) from the outside, but with no LLL inside the ovens. These 20 exposures were stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker to reduce noise.

My camera position for both the 2012 and 2025 shots were taken from the red dot position. Stephen's 2nd camera was in the blue dot position. Our outside light was at the yellow dot position — 220 feet (67 meters) from the ovens. We used the little Lume Cube Panel Mini at only 15% power, set at 5000º Kelvin color temperature.

Google map of the Ovens/Kilns • Key: Yellow = outside LLL light, Red = 2012 & 2025 camera positions, Blue = Stephen's 2nd camera position.

Below is the stacked image before Photoshop editing. The purpose of the outside lighting is to give contour shading to the beehive shaped oven/kilns.

25 stack exposures, taken with outside LLL (no editing yet in Photoshop)

Both of us did a long starlight exposure (f/4, 360 sec, ISO 3200, with the Long Exposure Noise Reduction mode turned on) to pick up more foreground detail. Overhead starlight is very flat lighting, with little shading and shaping, but it adds overall detail to the foreground. This exposure was done with the outside LLL light turned off. Below is that exposure:

RAW starlight long exposure (360 seconds), without any LLL

A third and final set of exposures was done with lights inside each oven — and no outside lighting. This was an HDR of 10-second exposures @ f/4.0, bracketed at ISO 400, 800, 1600 and 3200. Below is that HDR exposure:

Final exposure, just for interior lights

Lighting inside the ovens: In 2012, everything was done in one exposure, with an old-style Eveready Floating Lantern (with their big, heavy batteries) in each kiln to simulate a functioning oven. Because each oven doorway (from left to right) angles progressively away from the camera, the furthest oven required more inside light than than the closest oven, in order to look evenly lit.

Our 2025 inside the ovens lighting was done with six of Goal Zero's super small and lightweight Lighthouse Micro Flash USB Rechargeable Lanterns. These lanterns give out a warm, 4200º Kelvin light, which contrasts nicely with the cooler 5000º Kelvin light coming from our outside light.

The On/Off/Dimmer button on the top allows one to turn on the top flashlight or the four side LED's — either two or all four. We used just two of the LED's on each lantern so that we could have more directional control. We turned the lanterns upside down and placed each one on a white paper plate, which helped to reflect more light on the oven's ceiling. Using a white plastic bowl, we were able to rotate and direct the light where we want it, so that direct light from the LED's did not spill out through the oven doorways — we only wanted soft reflected light.

Editing the 2025 image. Controlled contrast is added to the stacked image by editing the sky in Photoshop with an "S" curve:

1. Select the evening sky by choosing Select > Sky.

2. Make that selection a Curves adjustment layer by choosing Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves.

3. Choosing highlight and shadow points along the diagonal line of the Curves histogram, make an "S" curve that increases contrast in the sky, while protecting detail in both the highlights and the shadow areas (the sloping curves at the top and bottom should never flatten against the top and bottom of the graph, or delicate highlights and subtle shadows will be lost—never to be recovered via additional post-processing).

Editing the stacked LLL exposure with an "S" curve

Blending the two foreground exposures:

1. Save the above image with its Curves adjustment layer and work with a "flattened" version (Layer > Flatten image). Give this flattened version as new name (File > Save as).

2. Open in Photoshop, both the flattened image and the long exposure via starlight.

3. Select the foreground of the starlight long exposure and copy it to the computer memory (Select > Sky, then Inverse the selection to select the foreground • once selected, choose Edit > copy).

4. Go to the flattened image, without closing the starlight image, and paste (Edit > Paste) the starlight foreground over top of the flattened image. Usually, this with drop right into perfect registration. If it does not, you may have to move the starlight image with the selection tool (top icon on the tool bar) to get it into perfect register. (Note that the pasted starlight foreground will immediately become a new Photoshop layer.)

5. Adjust the opacity of this layer to about 50%, then move the slider back and forth to your taste. Your goal is to add more foreground detail without losing too much of the shading from the original LLL stacked foreground.

Blending in the long starlight exposure

Adding the inside oven lights. In our final Photoshop layer-blend we are going switch from a "Normal" blend mode to a "Lighten" blend mode.

Use the "Lighten" blending mode for the interior lights exposure layer

When using this mode, only the brighter values will be blended into the background image. To insure that values (and stars) from the sky aren't blended into the background image, you should either 1.) select only the foreground for your layer blend, or 2.) you should significantly darken the sky. I chose just to make the sky totally black:

The "Lighten" blending mode is amazing!

Better Control Over the Interior Lights: Some might ask why we didn't light the interior of the ovens at the same time we did the stacked exposures with the outside Low Level Lighting? If we had, there would have been no need for this last blending step! True, but by doing the interior lighting as a separate blend, we had greater control over the intensity and the final color rendition. Trying to get everything exactly balanced for a single exposure, like I did in 2012 (or a for a series of stacked exposures), is very tedious and time consuming. One mistake, and the whole shot could have been doomed. Doing a separate series of HDR exposures for the interior lights also allowed us to broaden the gamut of that glow coming out of the oven doors.

Distortion Correction. In my final tweak to the image, I used the Distort and Warp tools to take out the keystone leaning of the left oven (Edit > Transform > Distort and Edit > Transform > Warp):

My final 2025 image with distortion correction

I still think I like Stephen's perspective better (below). In addition to Photoshop and Lightroom editing, Stephen also used PixInsight editing on the sky. PixInsight is an editing software for astronomers. It has some amazing tools, but it also has a steep learning curve. We may delve into that in another post...

Stephen Clayson's perspective from his 2nd camera

What are your thoughts?