Friday, May 28, 2010

Panoramas: Not Just a Fun Word to Say


Early Morning Light on Lake Hodges
I'm breaking my own post template for this one, and asking you to make sure your browser window is wide enough to take in the full photo above. Go ahead and resize it now, I'll wait...

That's the joy and the problem of panoramic photos. They're HUGE! In fact, it's difficult to properly display them on a website due to their size. This particular image has a wealth of detail, even in the back lit hills, however, due to its overall dimensions, I can't display it large enough for those details to be seen.

In the olden days of film cameras, a specially formatted panoramic camera to be done seamlessly. Now, with the advent of digital photography and the magic of Photoshop, creating a panoramic can be done painlessly and without a special camera. This particular image is actually 6 images, taken in horizontal orientation shot about 20 minutes before sunrise, and then "stitched" together in Photoshop.

Panoramas can be difficult to plan, since you can't see the entire image in the viewfinder at once and minor shifts in camera position can cause insurmountable perspective distortions and, as seen above, the vast scope of the image often encompasses very different lighting from edge to edge. Despite the difficulties, they can be truly rewarding to capture, especially when they turn out like this one!

See more of my panoramas here, in the appropriately title Panoramas gallery.