This 4 shot, full resolution panorama, done with the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Assisted Panorama mode, covers just over 180 degrees. I was, so to speak, back to back to myself for the first and last shots. I has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow, which should happen if you click the image and open the Smugmug lightbox.  (My Smugmug uploads are limited to 4000 pixels wide…the original is 11834×3030.

In an image this wide, I find that the normal horizon placement rules don’t apply. This image is almost equally split between sky and landscape, and yet to my eye, it works. Certainly the level of interest in the clouds helps, providing a effective balance for the details of the plain.

This is the Kennebunk Plains again and you can see Northern Blazing Star on the left and right in the immediate foreground. What you see here, by the way, is about 3/4 of the whole Plain. My back, in the center of the image, is to the road that divides the Plain and separates the smaller quarter on the other side, and if I had included any more on either end of the image you would have seen the road and its telephone poles.

Assisted Panorama displays the leading edge of the first shot in transparent form so you can lay it over the landscape to take image two, etc. It makes even tripod-less panos pretty easy. Here each exposure was at 32mm equivalent field of view, and nominal exposure was f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. The image was stitched in PhotoMerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for Clarity, Intensity, and Sharpness in Lightroom.

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