Hi Brett,
To begin with, I think you have created quite a strong, graphic image by positioning the stop sign against the night sky. It was not that long ago that it was a real struggle for photographers to capture such an amazing starry sky in a photograph without getting star trails… new camera technology is definitely making life easier for photographers.
Now while I love almost everything about this photograph, the one thing that lets it down is your control of the exposure… particularly in the foreground. I am not sure if that is a train or a car, or even just you moving flash lights behind the signs to get the moving streaks of light but it has come through too bright in this picture. I guess being the Pilbara you do not get much traffic going past there either!
One thing that can give you more flexibility with managing exposure is to shoot in RAW mode. RAW images are bigger and take up more card space, but buying a couple of extra memory cards is definitely a lot cheaper than driving back up to WA for the sake of a reshoot. (Nowadays, I tend to work with 8GB Sandisk Extreme memory cards). With RAW mode you can pull back the exposure a couple of stops if you discover that you have overexposed an image too much.
Another option that I regularly use is to bracket an image. In other words, making a photograph at 15 seconds and then 4 seconds and 1 seconds etc. If I am in a hurry to capture an image I will use two stop intervals because I know that I can cover the gaps in RAW mode.
Now there is a chance that as you reduce the exposure time to make the foreground darker you will make the sky go too dark, but if this happens I would be inclined to use Photoshop to bring two images – one with an exposure for the sky and another with an exposure for the foreground – together.
If you can go back to the original file and make it darker, or if you do have a darker image then I think this will be more successful.
It is definitely a beautiful idea and if you get the chance I would go out there and have another go at making this photograph.
Good work!
Anthony