Panorama of Autumn

Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine

A few says ago I posted a stitched HDR panorama of Day Brook Pond taken the same day as this sweep panorama, and only a quarter mile away on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Managment Area here in Maine. As I mentioned in that post, the difficulty with sweep panorama is managing the exposure for an effective sky and landscape. If you expose for the sky, the landscape is too dark, and if you expose for the landscape the sky is too often too light and featureless. In this case the exposure was pretty naturally balanced, with the sun on the trees and the clouds in the sky. Even so, the upper right corner burned out into a patch of white with no detail. In this case, since I did have lots of sky and cloud detail further to the left (due the angle of the sun) I could go into TouchRetouch and use a very light (low opacity) clone tool to paint a bit of character into the clouds on the right. The difference is subtle but it removes what was, to my eye, a distraction from the beauty of the image. Some folks would say it is cheating…the way I see it is that if the image still looks natural, and I am only restoring what my naked eye sees and the camera is not able to record, then a bit of digital magic is okay…on occasion. I would not want to come to rely on it in my day to day photography, but for those few shots that can benefit from just a touch of retouch, why not?

Sony Rx10iii in Sweep Panorama mode. Processed for HDR effect in Polarr, and retouched in TouchRetouch. 

2 Comments

  1. Reply
    gerrit haagsma October 10, 2017

    well done

    • Reply
      Steve October 11, 2017

      Thank you. 🙂

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