Chivay

X100T Fujifilm. 35mm equiv. t8 min @ f/8, ISO 2000
Location: Colca Valley, Peru.
From the rooftop of a hotel in the nearby I could set my X100T very tight reinforcing the counterweight with a bottle of water. I was very skeptical that the picture would be usable because of the possible strong flare ejected from the many street lamps at the bottom. I composed the photo as to cut them off my framing and using a dedicated lens hood. It is generally very hard to compose in the dark so first of all I allways do some test with an exagerated ISO and fully wide open only to determine focus and composition. I was after a dynamic shot so I chose a prolonged time of 8 minutes and closed down to f/8. A shorter time probably hadn’t been convincing in the aestetics providing the stars of a dubious trail.
The processing demanded a strong contrast to eliminate parasite lighting pulling the blacks to the extreme right of the histrogram. This procedure killed also some weaker star traces turning the photograph into a simpler proposition. Some burning was also needed at the bottom to combat the excess of light. LR and PS.