Good shit, I love this one.

I love this shot. I really want to take long shots like this. But i don't know how to take an 8 min exposure.

Christopher: I the TC-80N3 remote release.

I really like how the yellow and red contrasts with the serene blue of the water and sky. It is almost as if the stars are shooting across the pier. Excellent shot.

I love this picture. The colors are bright and the textures are smooth. The only part that kinda irks me is the noisy part of the surface of the water, where the lighter-colored ripples are visible in the foreground. I think it interrupts the smoothness and peacefulness of the shot, and is distracting. I know you like to be more of a purist with your photography, but that whole section is probably something I would try to clone out if I could figure out how to do it without disturbing the rest of the image.

But I love how the pier supports are visible underwater... and the stars look amazing!

Amazing colors. I also like the blurry effect where the pier meets the water.

This is pure magic... I'm speachless

Good shot. The water always gives a cool effect to night photography. I wish that there was more ocean around me. :) cheers.

Very nice David. Thanks for the late walk!

Hey Dave,

Haven't commented in a very long time, but I'm still enjoying your photos everyday. It's not that I don't want to comment, it's just that I have nothing to complain about when it comes to your photos. I try to see them from your eyes and appreciate them through mine.

But this one is really nice. I love the rich blues and the way the pier reminds me of Harry Potter. Weird.

Anyways, have a wonderful holiday if I don't get the chance to comment again (I'm working out in the field right now with little to no internet access).

Cheers.

Wow. The water is a bit bothersome to me too, but this is still an AMAZING shot! Wow, wow, wow.

Very visually appealing. As always, your night shots seem to overflow with saturation. Which in this case, is a good thing, as the contrast of the pier wall and sky is quite striking. The diffuse glow of city lights adds a lot. If you keep getting results like this when shooting Fleetwood Pier, then keep them coming!

Beautiful colors, I've never seen such vibrant colors from a long exposure before. It's a wonderful shot and the dreamy quality of the water adds a lot to it.

Thats certainly not an expsosure for the faint hearted. Great colour. Very interesting things happening at the water end of the legs. nice one!

Absolutely fabulous shot! Love that vivid blue!!!

Awesome shot! I love that shade of blue.

The colors are brilliant, and it's so crisp. Beautiful shot. I envy that you're able to enjoy the weather.

Nice. Especially for a 8m exposure. Although my 350D would be extremely noisy after 8m, even at ISO 100.

Did you have to do much post-processing to get rid of noise?

Thanks,
Russ

Parker wrote: The only part that kinda irks me is the noisy part of the surface of the water, where the lighter-colored ripples are visible in the foreground.

Isn't that the sand visible through the water?

I, like everyone else here, think this is an awesome shot. Vivid blues, great contrasting yellow and red.. serenity, good composition. What are you not happy with Dave? You must be one fussy bugger... :)

Oh, man .... I was about to point out that the complaints about the water was actually wet sand but Geoff beat me to it.

Very nice colors: wonderful blues but the maroon/yellow band is particularly different. I know you've shot the pier before but I don't remember those colors (too tired, too late to go investigate).

Your talent is extreme but I don't believe even you good enough to "see" the star paths and manage to get them to complement your angle. Still, you've done it so I don't know what to believe.

how you can get that blue!!! Very nice image...

Thanks to share this spectacular photo. It is necessary to have a great photographic vision to be able to see what the camera will see after 8 minutes of exposition. I like particularly the contrast between the blue of the sea and the sky and the red-yellow of the structure. It is an image that, in spite of the contrast, transmits serenity.

Very cool! I love it, especially the bright blue. What are the stripes in the sky?

great colors. the foto is really clear without clouds and nice starstripes in the sky. i like it very much.

I am not sure I like the subject. One hulking piece of concrete but this is more than made up for by the star tracers and intense blue of the sky. Such a surreal image. I also like the haze of the sea. Ethereal.

David, this is a compelling shot. Is there any chance you could talk us through the post processing you undertook to achieve this effect? From shot to final product!

I would be very much appreciative.

Thank you.

Great colours for such a long exposure, and noise free too, very nice. Love the star trails too, they are ace when you can start to see the arc they travel in.

What a good advertisemnt for a Canon CMOS sensor...makes me wish I wasn't immersed in Nikon equipment.
This blue is magical, and possibly the equivalent of that particular shade of grey in conventional black& white prints that looks like pure silver. Very satisfying eyefood.

Is it me or does the combination of colours in the sea make it appear to move? Maybe it's just my eyes after a heavy night out.

Ace shot though.

I may be exposing my technical ignorance here, but how the hell do you get such a vivid blue and well defined structure when shooting at ten to ten on a December night in deepest darkest Blackpool?

Post capture processing? If so, I refer to my previous comment regarding the possibility of DJN masterclass on photoshopping.

Otherwise, I am fascinated to know how the image clarity was acheived when shooting at this time of day.

The image is simply stunning. Defenitely one of your best for some time.

Bravo.

Thanks everyone.

Thinh Q: nice to see you :-)

Russ: I did use Noise Ninja to remove a bit of noise from the sky, but on the whole the 20D does produce very clean long exposures.

Geoff: yes, it's the sand you can see beneath the pier - there wouldn't be any ripples with an eight minute exposure.

Sharla: I don't often shoot that pier from the North, hence you won't have seen the colours all that often, if at all.

Oriol: the great thing about night exposures is that all you need to do is calculate the exposure and the camera does the rest. For this shot, and the next couple I'll be putting up, I set the camera to ISO 3200 and worked out that I need a 15s exposure. Reset to ISO 100 and this translates to eight minutes.

GP: they're stars.

Benfranco: the post-processing for this shot was a little bit complicated in that I produced two images from the RAW file that are merged: one to process the sky as blue, and one to retain the 'natural' colours of the pier. After that it was just a case of using the Channel Mixer to saturate the image and the Curves tool to increase the contrast.

Anthony: on the whole, night shots, when correctly exposed, are very well saturated straight out of the camera.

Dave this is wonderful!! How could you not like this?? I don't think my camera can do an 8 min shot!! This looks amazing with the smooth contrasts and the surreal looking pier. It looks like someone hand painted it! I love it!

stephanie: I like it, but I'm not 100% happy with it, particularly the colour balance. The next two, on the other hand, are much better. Well, I think so ;-)

absolutely lovely shot!

Beautiful shot Dave! I love it! The softness, the blues, the light trails. Gorgeous :)

Very nice shot. If I am reding this picture right, then the streaks in the sky are starts and that means the shutter must have been kept open for quite some time.

it's a cool pic... the blue looks unreal

Wow, the colours you've managed to capture in this night shot are really spectacular. Beautiful!

Love this photgraph, there is a vibrancy to the blue red and yellow which draw me in to the picture. My eyes are then pulled to the distant illuminations of the town behind the pier. Great shot and thanks for sharing your work.

First time poster--long-time visitor. This may be favorite of all of your shots. Just brilliant....

Thanks everyone, it's great to get so many comments, especially on a shot that I think is the weakest of the three that I'll be putting up. That said you'll probably all prefer this one to the others ;-)

A very beautiful shot. I was wondering about the noise factor also, considering an 8 minute exposure. Perhaps the noise was reduced due to the ISO 100 setting?

Very nice shot. I have always had a hard time with long exposures. This one is really awesome!

Great shot Dave. Those tracers look like they're landing in the distance. I like this shot but I think I like the next one better. I really like the misty effect of the water and it is better shown on the next photo.
As always thanks Dave.
RustyJ

lovely!!!

ok to throw a spanner in the works....I do prefer this one of the three. The intensity of the blue with the red and yellow is great.

Amazing punch to this picture. The inky black of the underside of the pier contrasts wonderfully against the blue of the sky. The only distraction for me are the star trails that are produced by the long exposure. I would have probably preferred it if you had Photoshopped these out these out of the image; even so, this is still a magical shot.

Just wondering how many of the posters know that this is a digitally enhanced picture, as freely described by the photographer earlier? It seems to me, that most people think this is a straight shot, with no manipulation/post-processing, in fact a composite of 2. I don;t mean to offend anyone, I really commend this photographer for sharing the fact that this is a composite, enhanced pic.

a: it's only a composite image in the sense that I processed the same RAW file twice to alter the while balance of the shot; i.e. it's not a composite of two separate images. This is something I could have done in Photoshop, but it often results in a cleaner image if you do it doing RAW processing.

So you were explaining that you you produced two images from one RAW file and then merged them. Can you be more specific on how you were able to blend these images back together? Is there anyway you could just try to describe simply how you were able merge only the sky from one image with only the pier from the other image?

wow, i really need to enhance my post processing skills.

your work is inspiring.
thank you