Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Panoramas Part 2: Return to the Same Locations


Late Evening Light on Lake Hodges
Another panorama from the shores of Lake Hodges. This one is a combination of 4 horizontally oriented frames, taken back in December (or about 3 months before the other panorama I already posted). Both were taken at sunrise and illustrate why it's possible to keep visiting the same locations time and time again. Don't get me wrong, I love finding interesting new locations, and while it's not a perfect comparison, (this one was taken from a slightly different vantage point looking North instead of East) this image and the previous panorama image could have been taken at two vastly different locations not just different conditions.

In this image, San Diego had yet to receive its spring rains and the water level of the reservoir is much lower, showing more reds in the foreground than in the previous image. The air temperature was much closer to the water temperature in this image than the last, as evidenced by the lack of steam rising from the water's surface. Those are seasonal changes though, and can be predicted with relative ease. The major difference is much harder to predict. The light! Light is building blocks of any photograph, landscape or otherwise. Portrait photographers have the luxury of carefully crafting their studio lighting set up to achieve the desired effect time after time. For landscapes, you can make your best guess at how the sunrise or sunset will turn out based on the natural conditions (temperature, cloud cover, etc) but by and large you just need to be there and hope you get lucky. Good days go bad if the clouds aren't in the right spots and bad days can go good at a moment's notice if there's a break in the clouds in the distance. This unpredictable nature is exactly what makes an image such as this one and the previous panorama so rewarding to capture.
See more of my panoramas here, in the appropriately title Panoramas gallery.