That’s right it is the big day with the tiniest of images. Believe it or not I did think this through. While I was out shooting over the weekend we had some AMAZING clouds in pretty much every direction. Since the clouds filled the sky, the landscape photographer knew that the only way to capture everything I saw and felt was through a series of Panos. I was so excited when I was shooting to write this post because I knew these would turn out awesome. Now if you tuned in Monday when I wrote my post about what you can do with just a couple of hours and that more was coming, then here is the pay out. Here is the catch though, YOU HAVE TO CLICK EACH IMAGE TO SEE THEM FULL SIZE. I’m afraid that’s one disadvantage of posting a pano to a blog.
Each one of these panos was taken with the D4 and 24-70AF-S. No bracketing but I was shooting at about f/8 or f/10 to increase depth of field and get more details to come out. After all these are supposed to be big. Each one was finished in Adobe Camera Raw with the merge to panorama option. There is about 5-7 compositions overlapped in each one. Now if you haven’t played around in ACR very much with this feature then you should, especially with the spherical and cylindrical perspective. Both options create a different look before you save the pano. Spherical is narrower but creates a longer pano, cylindrical is more even with more proportionate height to length. These three are all cylindrical. The last pano is special!
While I was out I played around a little bit because I hadn’t done a lot of panos before. Partly because stitching them together took time that wasn’t worth it for me. Now, well, I just can’t stop! This last pano I thought, “hey turn the camera vertically and see what happens?” This seven frame pano actually turned out better then I thought, because I honestly thought ACR wouldn’t merge it together but it did.
What’s the advantage of doing this? Merging images together taken horizontally provides more in focus from left to right. By going vertically you are providing more information up and down. By going vertically there is more foreground, which is that great Montana grasses, and background which is the dramatic sky. The other difference between horizontally and vertically, is the image feels less compressed then it does shooting horizontally.
Working these techniques and experimenting after you already have a shot in the bag is how you learn and your photography evolves. Without a doubt I will be doing more of this in the future.