Sunday, October 25, 2009

Vertical Panorama Photography- The Bur Oak




Hi All- Megan and I are settling back into Ohio. There is just something about a week long vacation in Maine that made me wordless upon our return for a few days, but now that we're here and living our lives once again, I'm getting back into the swing of things.

As a photographer, have you tried shooting multi-image panoramas? If you haven't you really should. It's just crazy fun. I made this seven image composite of our backyard oak tree in Adobe Photoshop CS4. I've also used Canon PhotoStitch to make panoramas. PhotoStich is a free program that came with your Canon camera software (other camera owners will have to help me out with this one- does Nikon offer a free photostitch software?) Even if you don't have a Canon camera, you can download it and use it all for free.

As you can see, even with multiple photographs, I wasn't able to get the whole tree in the frame. Maybe I can? What if I took multiple vertical rows of images stacked upon each other, and then tried to use the Adobe CS4 photomerge tool?

Also- If you do go and try to do this- make sure you shoot in manual and turn off autofocus. You'll want the images to have identical exposures and focal point- if they don't, your finished product could look very strange.

All of this panoramic photography has been prompted by two things. First, this incredible composite image from the latest National Geographic that must be seen in the magazine to be appreciated. And second, I have been tasked to shoot a vertical and horizontal panoramic photograph for my most recent assignment at Columbus State.

Although this type of photography might sound gimmicky, it allows us nature lovers to present the natural world in interesting way that captures so much more information than a single frame image. It's almost like being there, but not quite, but just close enough to be really interesting.

Tom

Also- Here's another free panoramic maker, that a reader pointed out to me, this one from Microsoft.

4 comments:

  1. This is a cool photo- can't even see the whole tree w/out scrolling on my monitor. :-)

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  2. Fabulous tree AND photo!

    We have a couple enormous sycamores that I've tried and failed to capture in a single shot. I'll investigate the stitching program, thanks for the link!

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  3. Thanks Megan. Maybe you need a bigger monitor. I could get a new one and give you mine :)!

    Thanks Jain- A streamside sycamore would make for a wonderful vertical panorama.

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  4. I love shooting panoramas. I'm only getting the hang of it lately, though. I need to employ my tripod much more than I do.

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