Posts in Category: panorama
6/11/2011: Laudholm Farm Panorama
Laudholm Farm, as you know if you have been following my posts any amount of time, is home to the Wells National Estuarine Research Center. There is a cooperation between the Federal Government and the Laudholm Trust to manage the land and maintain the buildings and trails, while actively hosting research each year. Laudholm farm is one of few remaining undeveloped salt marsh farms along the coast. This is the vista from the little rise between the Farm proper and the drop to the marsh and the beach. This time of year, I go out this trail to look for courting Bobolinks, and it is one of my favorite photo walks any time of year. What you see in the sky is the back edge of the front that brought severe thunder storms through the night before, knocking out power to the farm and most of the area around it.
This is four hand-held 32mm equivalent exposures, using Program set to Active D-Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization on the Nikon Coolpix P500, overlapped and stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. Nominal exposure was in the f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160 range.
If you click on the image it should open to the full width of your monitor.
6/6/2011: Merriland River Spring Panorama
Of course, this has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow for full effect. Click the image and it should open in that format.
This is the Merriland River where it flows down to meet the Little at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters.
When I took this shot, three shots actually, I had little expectation of its working out. It was simply a why not, digital is free experiment. What caught my eye was the delicate spring foliage, the sweep of the river, and the light on the trees on the left. I liked the way the two relatively close trees framed the view, and I liked the look of the diagonal branch. It had to be a pano though, since any single view out through the foreground obstructions would make them just that…obstructions. The foreground branch, I think, works in the pano because it has the room it needs to look natural, and the larger context to make sense of it. This is my second experiment with Panorama with foreground objects. I am liking them.
Three 23mm equivalent fields of view, overlapped and stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 9, using the reposition tool. Nikon Coolpix P500, f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO160. Program with Active D-Lighting, for dynamic range, and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
5/3/2011: Matanzas Inlet (cloud portrait)
Matanzas Inlet is a beautiful place…popular with both fishermen and Least Terns…and easily accessible because it is part of Ft. Matanzas National Monument. But of course it is the clouds that dominate this image. Thundershowers waiting to happen. The low angle, thanks again to the flip out LCD on the camera, and the long stretch to the horizon add to the tension of the sky. The extra wide angle zoom also helps to capture the effect.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
And here is an alternative way of capturing the day. It needs to be viewed large. Three 23mm views, stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
4/28/2011: Florida Sunrises in Panoramic View
Sunrise over the Atlantic from my 3rd floor balcony in Crescent Beach Florida, two mornings this week. Though the Nikon P500 has an Easy Panorama mode, these were done the old fashioned way by stitching three exposures in PhotoShop Element’s PhotoMerge, using the Cylindrical tool. Clicking on either of them will take you to a full screen view.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. Three exposures 1) f3.4 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160, 2) f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. 1) was taken with the Dawn and Dusk mode, and 2) was taken with Sunset.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Lots of extra fill light in both shots. 1) color corrected with the Auto setting.
4/23/2011: Kennebunkport Panorama
I am beginning to have doubts that the new camera is going to work for me…I am seeing too many digital processing artifacts in the images. They look fine…even great…at screen resolution…but they would not make a good print. Still, there is no doubt that Sweep Panorama is an amazing feature! You just set the shot up in camera, choosing the direction and angle (120 to 360 degrees), press the shutter release and turn in a circle until the camera has captured the full swing. The camera does all the stitching, evens out the exposure where needed and produces a seamless panorama. Since the camera takes a lot more exposures than are needed for overlap, and certainly way more than any human would attempt, it can do a pretty amazing job of building the pano. View this one at full monitor width by clicking on it to open the window in Smugmug.
What we have here is the sweep from the point at Cape Ann, on the left, all the way around to the breakwater at Kennebunkport harbor, on the right.
Fujifilm HS20 EXR. Unknown number of exposures, processed to pano in camera. Nominally f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200.
Processed very lightly (the Fuji does not require much and will take even less…really heavy artifacts appear with the kind of processing I used for my Canon SX20IS).
4/17/2011: Where the Merriland meets the Little
Happy Sunday! I spent an hour yesterday morning at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters area, walking the little nature trail through the woods down to the Little River and the Merriland, as the sun was trying to warm a cold early spring day. There is little sign of spring at Rachel Carson beyond the light, the first hard leaf buds, and the earliest signs the intention to blossom on the Hobblebush.
This is where the Merriland River, in the foreground, meets the Little River, on the left. It is a 4 shot panorama and really needs to be seen as large as your monitor will allow. It is, in fact, considerably wider than you would be likely to take in at one view. By relaxing your attention and, so to speak, stepping back behind your eyes, you would be able to see this sweep, but generally our attention is more focused and we would only see this as a series of impressions. I like the way the early light is playing across the marsh and bringing up the blues in the water, when there are none in the sky.
Canon SX20IS, four 28mm equivalent fields of view, stitched using the Panorama tool in Photomerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Average exposure was in the f4 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80 range. Landscape mode.
And,for Sunday…I think about that focused attention we bring to bear on the world around us, limiting our natural 180º plus, to between 15º of truly focused attention, and 60º-90º of operational attention. We call the rest peripheral. And yet, we could all benefit, I suspect, from the habit, say, once or twice a day, of stepping back behind our eyes, relaxing, and taking in the full width of our vision. It is certainly so in spiritual things. One of the most profound insights of any spiritual journey is just how focused on our limited view of things we all are, and what a change it makes to step back and look out of larger eyes than our own. Doing so does not diminish in any way the particular that is the focus of our attention…it just puts it in perspective. What is my own salvation, precious as it is, in comparison to the salvation of mankind and the redemption of creation? There is a kind of prayer that seeks that experience…not petition (necessary focused on the particular)…but a reverent approach to unity through love that is sometimes called meditation. Unfocused attention, while I would not argue that it is the highest form of vision, or of prayer, is undoubtedly good for us.
Which is maybe why every photographer needs to experiment with panoramas once in a while. 🙂
4/9/2011: Upriver Mousam Panorama
This is just two 28mm equivalent images stitched, but I guess it still qualifies as a panorama. We are looking up the Mousam from the Route 9 bridge in Kennebunk on a day with amazing clouds and a spring snow on the ground. It is interesting to me that, being familiar with the seasons in Southern Maine, I could never mistake this for a winter shot, despite the snow. The quality of the light, and its angle, marks this as somewhere very near the equinox…as indeed it was. April 4, the first weekend April. The only strange part is that I had to pull off through a line of huge snowballs pushed up by the plough to take the shot. Likely, but only possibly, the last snow of this season.
I really like the quality of the light and its variations across the surface of the water.
Canon SX20IS. Two 28mm equivalent field of view exposures, f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80, Landscape Mode, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 9’s panorama tool, and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. There was a telephone pole at the left, which I cropped out, so it is not quite the width of the two exposures.
This is a rare panorama with waves in that the blend where the exposures meet actually works, managing to pass for a eddy in the current.
4/5/2011: Wood Island Light Panorama, etc.
This is a 4 shot panorama, taken from East Point in Biddeford Pool, Maine, looking up the coast past the Wood Island Light and well out to sea. It really must be viewed larger. Clicking on the image should open it to the width of your monitor.
And this is a closer view, at about 300mm equivalent field of view…as you can see there was a high wind and lots of moisture in the air, which limits the sharpness of the light at this distance. What you see beyond the light is Cape Elizabeth.
I am still experimenting with Panorama. I always forget that the sea is not still and any shot with waves is going to take some fixing. I had to go in with the clone tool in PhotoShop Elements 9 and do some creative wave adjustment…still, in a shot this large and expansive…most people will not notice. Since the level of the horizon in a shot this wide is critical, I did not use widest angle on the Canon’s zoom, which would have introduced some linier distortion in each shot. I find that normal lens (50mm or there abouts) stitches better when there is such an obvious horizon.
1) Canon SX20IS, four 62mm equivalent field of view shots, stitched in PSE 9’s Panorama tool using the Align Images setting. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. 2) Canon SX20IS at 300mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode for both.
Both processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
3/31/2011: A Different Panorama (just fooling)
An odd sort of panorama: my first attempt with a major foreground object. I was amazed that it worked as well as it did and I will definitely be trying it again when the opportunity presents itself. Three shots of the main pool at Emmons Preserve in the somewhat harsh early spring light, stretched a ways down the stream on the left behind the tree trunk, stitched in PhotoShop Elements 9’s Panorama tool.
Canon SX20is, each shot at 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/325 @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
(This post was prepared completely on my Motorola Xoom tablet, mostly just to see if it could be done. Also, I am aware of the incorrect dates on this and the last post. Happy April Fools Day!)
3/26/2011: Beach Panorama
For Scenery on Saturday, this is another three shot Panorama, this time the ocean side of the dunes at Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk Maine. It will benefit from the largest view you can manage, and should open automatically to the width of your monitor if you click the image. I am really liking what the cylindrical stitching does in PhotoShop Elements 9. The view is expansive and yet natural looking…as opposed to what I have done before which always looks to me like a horizontal slice out of a normal image. This is, imho, unmistakably a panorama.
And, of course, the image itself has a lot of interest, beginning with the amazing clouds, the expanse of sand, the tiny people further up the beach, and the cluster of houses on the right. It is not the usual view of the beach, taken, as it is, looking more or less inland, but I like it.
Three exposures from the Canon SX20IS handheld. F4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Stitched and cropped in PhotoShop Elements 9 using the cylindrical mode. Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.