Posts in Category: panorama
Big Bend on Branch Brook: Winter
This is a slightly mind-bending panorama that you really need to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow. Click on the image to open it in the lightbox on WideEyedInWonder, auto-sized for your display. It is just about a full 180 degrees. You can see two ends of the same straight rail sticking out about 1/6 of the way in from each corner. Though the perspective looks natural when stitched together like this, you would have to relax your vision, or at least your attention, to see this in real life. It could be done if you are one of those people who can process your peripheral vision without falling over. 🙂
It is 4 fames, each frame an In-camera HDR, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 11’s PhotoMerge tool, and then final processed in Lightroom. I shot it off my Fat Gecko walking-about tripod.
Canon SX50HS. Four overlapping 24mm equivalent field of view frames. Recorded exif: f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
Happy New Year! Dawn 2013
I planned on posting a dawn shot, out the back door, over the back yards, to celebrate the first sunrise of 2013, but I had given up on the sunrise and started another post. It looked to me like the sun had snuck up behind a cloud bank and I was going to have to post something else. Mid-post I happened to look up and, low and behold, there was the sunrise I had hoped for! Oh me of little faith.
So, I was writing about how my artistic intent for this year is to 1) be there, 2) be aware so I can see any possible image, 3) be ready (skills honed and gear mastered). And then to frame, capture, and share what I see. That’s it. That will be my photographic goal for 2013 as it has been for many years now. I am looking forward to it!
So, the dawn. Still in my bathrobe, I cracked the sliding glass door that opens on the back deck (it is cold out there) and framed shots as the colors came up in the clouds. Open door. Shoot. Close door. Wait. Open door, etc. When the sunrise had reached what I judged to be its peak, I shot two last frames to form a panorama. The panorama above. (click on it to open it full width in the lightbox)
Fine. Then I get the images into Lightroom and open them out into PhotoShop Elements. I just installed PE 11 last week. Where did they put the PhotoMerge tools?? It took me 10 minuets of searching the help files to find the new placement. Then when I got the images into PhotoMerge’s Panorama tool, I realized that (once again!) I had tipped the camera up to frame the sunrise, and forgot that the distorted perspective would wreck havoc with any panorama attempt. There was just no way these two images were going together smoothly. Rats! Not doing so well my statement of artistic intent so far.
But then, in preparing the other images for my gallery I tried adjusting perspective in Lightroom. Ah ha! What if I adjusted perspective on the two panorama pics before exporting them to PE? No sooner thought than done, and, hey presto, PE’s PhotoMerge Panorama tool was able to do the rest!
So, here it is. Happy New Year. Dawn 2013. And I will have to amend my statement of artistic intent to include whatever learning is needed to accomplish it. But that is okay. I like to learn.
Canon SX50HS in Hand-held Night Scene Mode. 2 images stitched in PE’s PhotoMerge tool. f3.4 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Happy New Year to you all. And may you all fulfill your own artistic intent this year and every year.
The Wide View: Branch Brook Pano. Happy Sunday!
This is a two shot panorama from the viewing platform on Branch Brook at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells Maine. Around the second bend you see in the middle distance there Branch Brook and the Merriland River join to form the Little River for its short winding run to the sea. The tide is full in, so Branch Brook does not look very brook-like.
This is actually two in-camera HDR images stitched together in PhotoShop Elements’ PhotoMerge tool, and then final processed in Lightroom. I used a handy post on the platform and simply rotated the camera between images. I am increasingly pleased with the ease and the quality of the Canon SX50HS’s in-camera HDR. It is not obvious at all, yet produces a very nice extended range image. The clouds, in particular are very natural, and yet the shadows are open and the greens of the evergreens are indeed green, not black. It gives me just enough extra to work with in Lightroom to produce some of the most natural images I have ever done.
For the full panoramic effect you really need to click on the image and view it full screen in the lightbox.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. Two 24mm equivalent field of view exposures. f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80.
And for the Sunday Thought. It is, sometimes, about taking the wide view. I love the small intricate details of life in this world, and if you flip back through my posts, you will see that I spend a lot of time celebrating them. I also love the big wide angle vista, which landscape under a dramatic sky. The last 3 cameras I have owned have had zooms that reach 24mm equivalent, and I doubt I will ever buy another camera that is limited to 28mm, or (shudder) 35mm at the wide end (yet, of course, I used to think of both 35mm and 28mm as wide angle.) And beginning about 2 years ago I have taken the occasional Panorama…where more than one image is stitched to create a view that stretches our perception of the reality around us…though oddly it does so by presenting a swath that more closely corresponds to our natural naked-eye view of the world. Part of my move to Panorama has undoubtedly been facilitated by the availability of software, in-camera, and in post processing, that makes it easy to stitch images together. But part of it has been a new appreciation for the wide view, even though those intricate details I love are diminished…submerged in the stretch of imagery across full width of my computer screen. I have come to appreciate the sweep of the landscape that overloads my senses and touches a bit of a different kind of awe in me.
And I am thinking of this in the context of the coming election. For me, elections are a very spiritual matter, and I really want to be sure that my spiritual self is fully engaged in my choices. In fact, I want to make sure that any decision I make that has the kind of consequences a national election has is made in the spirit and not in the flesh. And I find that what is required, by my spirit, is the panoramic view.
Sometimes it seems the election is all about the intricate detail of issues…with the hot issues…those that raise the most emotional heat…being the focus of all the attention. We are tempted, in fact we are encouraged by ad after ad and article after article and news story after news story, to make our decision based on the candidate’s position on those issues…on this issue or that issue…often on a single issue among all the others…one issue alone.
Among my people, my fellow Christians, this approach is particularly prevalent…and there are issues which have deep, undeniable and unavoidable, spiritual ramifications. Of course those issues and the candidate’s position on them are important…but they are not what my spirit craves when facing a decision of this magnitude. I find myself pulling back for the wide…the panoramic…view, where all such intricate detail is submerged in the sweep of the candidate’s life…what I can see or sense of the candidate’s spirit. I feel much more comfortable deciding based on who I perceive a the person behind the politics to be (difficult as that is to determine sometimes) than I do based on what the person thinks and promises about the hot issues.
Because I will be traveling to Texas next Tuesday, I have, in fact, already cast my vote. I am not going to tell you who I voted for (and certainly I am not going to tell you who you should vote for). But I will tell you that I voted on the wider view…I voted on the panorama of the person…I voted on what I could sense of the sweep of the spirit behind the politics.
Sometimes you have to take the wider view.
Mt. Rainier from above Sunrise. Panorama
Getting out of the car at Sunrise Lodge, with the view across the valley to Rainier in all its glory is one of those awe inspiring moments that define what is to be really alive. And then you see the trails up through the meadows to the ridge on the other side, and you know, if you are a photographer of any kind, that you have to get up there. It is not a bad climb, even for my 65 year old lungs and knees. I just go slow. and it was everything I imagined it to be.
This is a two shot panorama, handheld and stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements. To do it justice you need to click on it to see it full width in the lightbox.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Two 24mm equivalent field of view shots. f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Stitched as above. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
the Netherlands: the Oostvaardersplassen. Happy Sunday!
This is the accidental prairie/marsh formed when they built out the last section of the coast of the Netherlands in the 70s. Today it is home to an ancient breed of horse, recreated ancient cattle, Red Deer, foxes, and a few hundred species of birds…as well as being a major stop-over site on the European migration for many more. It is essential Holland, reclaimed from the sea-bed, cut by canals, backed up against a large inland lake, right on the edge of the sea. A beautiful place.
The weather while I was there was typical Dutch summer weather, with fronts coming through continuously: bouts of rain, sometimes heavy, and then periods of sun under skies straight out of a painting by Jacob van Ruisdael.
I felt blessed to be there, even when caught in a sudden downpour, even when the umbrella turned inside out.
These shots are with, of course, the Canon SX40HS. The top one was taken through the very dirty glass of an observation tower on the refuge, and I learned just how good the spot-removal tool is in Lightroom. It is very good!
1) 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125. 1) 2 frame panorama, stitched in PhotoShop Elements. 24mm equivalent shots. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought…well, it is going on 10PM here in Holland after a full day of work, workshops, and some birding and photography, and slightly too much good Chinese food. I am feeling decidedly spiritual in the sense of blessed and grateful, but my mind is too tired to make much more of it than that. I have an early train ride to the airport and then the long trans-Atlantic flight home, so I am thinking mostly of packing and getting some sleep. It has been, however, a great Sunday, and I hope yours was too!
Another Wide on the Mousam.
A three shot panorama looking up the Mousam from the bridge on Route 9 in Kennebunk. Again. I have been compelled to take this view before. It is one of the few spots in our flat forested county were you can get a mostly unobstructed view of the horizon to the west. East is easy. We have the ocean on that side. West, well you can go here, or you can go to the Kennebunk Plains, but that is about it. And here you have the river to catch the sky. 🙂 We are coming up on some of the best skies of the summer, as fronts pass in late August and early September. This is certainly one of them. (For the best view, click the image and it will open at the full width of your monitor.)
I thought about cloning out the bit of telephone pole on the left and the wires on the right, but decided they add to the framing and don’t distract too much. Besides I like the bobber and bit of ribbon caught on the wire 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Three 24mm equivalent shots. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 125. Stitched in PhotoShop Elements’ PhotoMerge tool. Final processing in Lightroom.
7/5/2012: Mousam at High Tide, Kennebunk ME
On my way to the Dragon Ponds the other day I had to pull over where the fishermen park by the Route 9 bridge over the Mousam River to catch this view. That is one of the unforeseen advantages of Froggy the Scoot (the electric scooter I bought for my local summer photoprowls, in case you have not been keeping up). You can stop on a dime on a whim on a view, anywhere there is sufficient shoulder to prop a kickstand. No excuses for missing any photo-op. On this day, a storm front was coming over, the clouds were spectacular, the river was brim full and just rippled enough for interest, there was this enticing little island of grass, and, on closer inspection, a rose in foreground. What could be better?
I framed this scene twice, once with more sky for drama and once with the rose. Only in looking at the two this morning, trying to decide which one to post, did I realize that what I really wanted was both…rose and sky. The two frames did not line up perfectly, as, of course, I was not thinking of a vertical panorama when I took them, but they were close enough to give it a try in PhotoShop Elements 10’s PhotoMerge tool. I expected to loose a lot on both edges where the images did not overlap, but PSE’s auto fill did an excellent job of projecting the content to fill the corners. If you want the challenge, try to see what is real and what is generated in the top left and bottom right corners. Amazing software. And I ended up with the image I wanted, even when I didn’t know what I wanted until too late. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Two frames merged vertically as above. Final processing in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/19/2012: Arrowwood Panorama
The James River flows from the northern boarder of North Dakota through the center of the state, down to the southern boarder. Flows is being generous. There is a total of 3 feet of drop in elevation from the north to the south. Three feet of drop! That means that the James river is essentially a long thin lake in North Dakota. It has the slowest current of any river in the US. This is a bend in the James at Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge near Carrington…a panorama of two shots stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 10. You can view it full width by clicking the image.
And yes, the water was that color blue!
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Two 24mm equivalent shots. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Stitched, as above, in PhotoShop Elements. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/3/2012: Near and Far, Kennebunk Bridle Path
These two shots were taken yards and moments apart, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where it crosses Rachel Carson National Wildlife land along the Mousam River. The Bridle Path is one of my local go-to-places for birds, bugs, wildflowers, and landscapes. I have written about it before, and it rarely fails me when I am out for a local photo-prowl. I posted a set of dragon and damselfly shots from pools along the Path last week. (Dragons down by the River).
The two shots also demonstrate the range of vision available in a small compact superzoom Point and Shoot camera today. They were both taken with the same camera using the fixed zoom that came with it. I use the word vision with intent. The camera is only a tool, and I try not to get caught up too much in the technology, but as a tool, the ability of the camera to capture everything from extreme close-ups to super-wide panoramas expands my vision so that I am paying attention to everything: near and far. This is good.
The first shot is a very large bumble bee in a Beach Rose blossom. I saw the bees in the blossoms and knew it would make a good shot, so I followed a bee until it landed in a likely flower and shot it at the equivalent of 1680mm from about 5 feet away. Even on a small monitor (or laptop screen) the bee is at least twice life size.
The shot is all about fine detail: the fur on the bee, the grains of pollen on its legs, even the texture of the petals. It catches our attention because we rarely look at anything that closely.
The second shot is a three frame panorama, each frame at 24mm wide angle equivalent. I have learned to trust the exposure system of the camera to produce three well matched frames, and the Panorama function in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements to stitch them together pretty much flawlessly. My camera has a panorama assist mode to help line up the frames, but I have found that I can do it pretty much by eye, just by rotating my upper body and squeezing off overlapping frames. This pano is about 135 degrees, and 8000 pixels wide. To see it at all well, you might want to click on the image so it opens to fill the full width of your monitor.
This shot is all about the sweep and grandeur of the cloud-scape over the landscape, and the way the light interacts with the larger geometry of the wide view. In life, our zone of attention is narrower than this. We would sweep our heads and our vision just as the camera swept, seeing this in at least 3 segments, even though if we centered our vision and relaxed, we would see the whole sweep just as it is presented in the image. We just don’t do that, or at least very often.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness (after stitching in PSE for the pano).
And for the Sunday thought: it comes down to why I feel good about having my attention expanded to cover everything from bees in the blossoms to the the play of light across the widest expanse of cloud and landscape.
I think the pressure of modern life compresses our vision and our attention. We don’t look very closely at anything and we don’t stop to take in the vista for the same reason. We don’t have time. We don’t have energy. All our attention is focused on the middle ground…the things that are large enough so we have to deal with them, but not so large that we can’t deal with them. It limits us, both in the physical, and since the physical is the living presence and present-time of the eternal spirit, in the spiritual as well. In a very real sense, our spirits are only as big, in the moment, as our attention to the world around us. Modern life makes us small. When we expand our vision we make more room for the spirit, we get bigger. We are created as spiritual beings living a physical life, to be agents of creation in this world. We can not afford to let life compress us.
So, it is good for me to have a camera that encourages my attention to the bees in the blossoms near at hand one moment, and to the way the clouds pile over the wide expanse the next. It is good.
4/11/2012: Back Creek brim full: panorama
With Back Creek brim full and an amazing sky overhead, who could resist attempting a panorama? I never learn. Panoramas with anything but absolutely still water are always a challenge. Here even the ripples move enough between shots to cause the stiching software (the PhotoMerge module in PhotoShop Elements in this case) some problems. Still it did a good job. I love the sweep of water, with its distorted reflections, under that awesome sky.
Three exposures at 24mm equivalent field of view on the Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and – 1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.