6/25/2011: Denver and the Front Range, panorama

You should click the image above to open it to the width of your monitor or screen. It is a thee shot panorama, each shot at 215mm equivalent field of view, with the tops of the Denver skyline on the left and the sweep of the Front Range mountains behind. I took it from the plateau above the city where they have developed the airport hotel complex, near Aurora. I caught a crow in passing, just as a bonus. I used the “assisted panorama” scene mode, hand held, on the Nikon Coolpix P500. After you take the first shot, about 1/3 of it is displayed on the left side of the finder, in transparent mode, so you can lay it directly over the live scene and line up the second shot, and so for the second, etc. for as many shots as you want to attempt. You need a program like the PhotoMerge function in PhotoShop Elements 9 to stitch the individual shots. PSE’s PhotoMerge is very sophisticated and does a excellent job of masking and tonal adjustment to make a seamless composition. It will even automatically fill in edge gaps left in the alignment.

Due to the heavy haze over the city this shot took some extra processing in Lightroom after assembly in PSE. I did my usual Clarity and Sharpness adjustments, plus some extra Recovery, Fill Light, and Blackpoint adjustment. I also did a general contrast boost, trying to offset that haze, and finally dragged a Graduated Filter effect down from the top for a local brightness and contrast adjustment (- brightenss and + contrast).

I think it captures the naked eye view pretty well.

One Comment

  1. Reply
    Stacey Nagy June 25, 2011

    Beautiful!

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