Astrophotography - Blending Images

Dear Steemians,

This is an astrophotography image I created last year. It has a special value to me since it features my dearest people on the planet - my son and my wife.

I've managed to collect some astrophotography nightscapes over the last couple of years. It's an organizational challenge to do this kind of photography. Milky Way is best seen during end of spring, summer months, and beginning of autumn. That seems like a lot of time. But when you consider rainy days, days with the moon obscuring the stars and all those days you couldn't stay late because of other obligations... It boils down to a couple of attempts a season...

Anyway, my family and I went to visit this cave last year. When taking this image I was not thinking about astrophotography at all. I just wanted to catch the sillhouetes of my son and my wife, from the inside of the cave. Later when I was editing these photos I just had a flash idea - why not replace the trees with the stars?

Original image - Nikon D750 / ISO 800 / 1/160s / f5.6 / Samyang 24mm f1.4

First thing I needed to do was to adjust the image in order to make it more alike for the astro shot. So I cropped it a bit and played with colour temperature. This was important because I needed to get a more-less similar tones on the rocks inside the cave. So, I came up with this:

Original photo with adjusted toning.

For the astro shot I chose a photo where the Milky Way is not obscured by any objects. It was a late night trip with some of my friends. I'll probably make a post on it's own about it...

Astrophotography nightscape / Nikon D750 / ISO 3200 / 15s / f2.8 / Samyang 24mm f1.4

Then it was all about blending the images in PS with the help of layers and layer masks. I lost a lot of time on adjusting and fixing the edges of the cave. No quick, smart selection tool will do the job properly. So, basically you use those just as a starting point.
I also did some additional toning to the image, to make it a bit more blue because the astro shot and adjusted original image were a bit to warm.
In the end I was more then happy with the result. I think I will print this one big and put it on the wall inside my son's bedroom.

Hope you like it.

Upvote, and keep following.

Cheers,
Nino.