Mt St. Helens National Monument Eruption

Mt St Helens National Monument Eruption ( click for higher resolution)

This weekend i went to Mt St Helens National Monument on my way back to Seattle from Columbia river gorge. Though my GPS played a bit with me and took me to wrong spot, i managed to find a overlook nearby. It was almost 10:00 and there was very less light in sky. I grabbed my tripod and camera and fire few shots to get foreground shot. Then i  realized that i could see Mt Rainer also (Can you spot it? ) 

The composition with Mt St Helens in front and Mt Rainier was not too bad though i would like to have clear foreground with some interest but that was trade off of arriving different spot..

After 1 hour, i set my intervalometer to take shots every 1 sec for 30 sec exposure.I fired it till i saw milky way rising over st Helens and give illusion of eruption!!

What camera settings I used

Nikon D800, Nikon 16-35mm F4 @16mm , ISO 3200, F4, 30 sec. of course you would need a solid tripod and ball head which will prevent any vibration and remote shutter release/intervalometer.

How I processed this image

The milky way is a stacked of 26 image using an action for CS6. Then i hand blended the foreground image that i captured earliear and blended both using luminance masking mode.

Then little contrast and tonal boost using Nik Plugin.

I hope you will like it! NK