We are still at least a week, maybe two, from full colors here in Southern Maine, but the curtain is up and the show has certainly begun! A couple of days ago I set out on my scooter at lunch time, thinking I would go hunt the last of the dragonflies, but this sky immediately caught my attention, and I turned around to head for the coast and the Back Creek ponds and the Mousam river crossing, where I could catch the sky over a landscape. I took several conventional wide angle views of Pond #1, but as I am always just a little disturbed by having to cut to top off the tall pine on the right, I tried a two shot vertical panorama. This is two 24mm views stitched one above the other to catch more of the tree and more of the sky. When you do vertical panos the perspective issues with a wide angle lens are dramatic. Even if you hold the camera out and try to keep the image plane parallel to the scene you end up with a lot of vertical perspective distortion. Looking at the two images your immediate thought it that there is no way you are going to be able to stitch them into one. I am always amazed at how well PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements does the job. I know it is all math, but most of time it makes very intelligent decisions about which parts of each image to retain and which to let go, and how to blend the two. The layer maps before blending look like jigsaw puzzle pieces…but when it works (and it does not always work) it produces a seamless image. Like this one. 🙂

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.  Two 24mm shots. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I used my HyperReal preset…which is designed for scenes like this with maximum tonal range and bright colors.