This is one you have to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow, though, unlike some panoramas I have done, it works well at this size too. (Click on the image to open it auto-sized for your machine.) This is, of course, all about the drama of the sky. When the runner walked into the 4th frame, I thought, “ah! I will have to start over.” But I took the image anyway, and I am glad I did. It would not work nearly as well as a pano without his anchor…without the sense of absolute scale the runner provides.

I generally produce flat panos, by just putting the images side by side and overlapping and blending. All the lines are straight, but the effect is like standing much further back and using a superwide angle lens. This pano was stitched in PhotoShop Elements as though the images were wrapped around a cylinder. Then in Lightroom I cropped the edges straight and used the distortion tools to pull the horizon more or less level. The effect is to produce a pano that mimics the sweep of the eyes as you turn your head to take in the full length of the beach. Try it. Sweep your eyes from left to right. In may ways it is a more natural view than most of my panoramas. And, as I say, with the runner in the foreground, there is no way you can fool yourself into thinking this is only a stretched out view of the world. I am not sure I could produce the effect again if I tried, but I certainly like it!

Canon SX50HS. 5 in-camera HDR shots from my Fat Gecko carbon fiber, shock corded tripod. Stitched in PhotoMerge in PSE. Final processing for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom, as well as some distortion work.