Week 3: Panorama

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Photos of the Week

Week 3 Assignment: Panorama

Panorama images can be described as any image that has a wide aspect ratio or longer proportion, either horizontal or vertical, than a standard image (i.e. 4 x 12 vs. 4 x 6). these types of images can be created using special panoramic cameras such as a Hasselblad Xpan or Fuju/Linhof 617, which are film cameras that shoot the images in a 3:1 wide panoramic ratio. Today, many point and shoot digital cameras have a panoramic stitch feature built into the camera for creating easy panoramic images. Using a DSLR however, you have to create panoramas the "old fashion" way, with Photoshop or other panoramic software. The benefit is a higher resolution and higher quality image due to the larger sensor of the DSLR. You may also ask: Why not just shoot a larger single image and crop out the panoramic you envision? The answer: Resolution and the limitation on the size you will be able to print the panoramic with good quality. You may not notice much of a difference on the computer screen at the sizes above, but when it is printed 6 feet long to hang on your wall, the difference will be exponential.

I use Photoshop with its Photomerge" feature, found under File/Automate. This works great for stitching 2 - 10+ images together to create a large panoramic image. The software is not foolproof, but as long as you keep the camera level throughout the string of images, overlap the images 25 - 50%, and keep a constant exposure, focus and depth of field, your results should be excellent.

This week I chose 2 photos of the week in order to show you two types of panoramas (also, I was unable to choose just one). I tried two slightly more difficult shoots, a low-light night panoramic, and something I had never tried before, a macro close-up panoramic. The first is a night shot of the new Light-rail train station at Seatac Airport, which was created by combining 4 images. The second is a combination of 8 images to create a close-up panoramic image of the Gerber daisy.

Coming Next:

Week 4 Assignment: Black & White

Week 2: HDR - First Look

Photo of the Week

Week 2 Assignment: HDR

(High Dynamic Range) First Look

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is the process of taking multiple exposures and combining them into a single image that has more detail in the highlights and shadows, which brings you a step closer to how the human eye sees things. This can be done using software such as Photoshop, which is my current software of choice. Photoshop has a nice automated feature that combines 2 or more images for you. It does a decent job, but usually needs some tweeking afterwards. They say it is best to use 3 to 5 images bracketed by one stop of exposure for each image. So far I seem to get the best combined image with just 2 images, one exposed for the highlights and one exposed for the shadows.

I am new to HDR, so I am still learning how this works. The key seems to be the scene or situation that is chosen to create the HDR image. This can be tough in the grey, overcast, rainy, winter weather of Seattle. Fortunately, the place I see it the most is out on the golf course.

The first photo was exposed for the grass of the fairway, leaving the sky white and completely blown out. The second photo on the right was exposed for the sky, leaving everything else in the darkness or shadows. By combining the two images, the result is the middle image with good detail and exposure in both the sky and the fairway.

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Week 3 Assignment: Panorama

Week 1: Orange

Photo of the Week



Week 1 Assignment: Orange
Orange, one of my favorite colors, can be conveyed in many ways, I decided that the simplest way is to show you how the two colors of red and yellow combine to create orange.

At first, this seemed like it would be quite simple to do, just put a red light next to a yellow light and take a blurred picture and hope for the best. Well, turns out I don't have a red and a yellow light in my house. Christmas lights would have worked well, except all of mine are white, which is what gave me the idea in the first place from other photos I had taken over the holidays. My next plan was to find these to lights out in the world next to each other. I did not find many options, but did notice that a cars tail lights and blinker are the two colors I was looking for. This had potential, except the shapes were wrong and not close enought together...and there is that blinking problem. Another option I found was a traffic light. These were the right shape I was looking for, but they are not on at the same time. To solve this problem, I realized I could do a double exposure and offset each image so they overlapped. The results did not turn our quite like I had hoped since I was not able to get straight on with the light, or close enough.

The solution, create my own lights in a controlled location..my office. I looked through my filters to find a yellow and a red filter. (These were last used when I was shooting b&w film, but very glad I kept them..I knew they would come in handy some day.) All I needed now was a light source..a flashlight was just the right size for my filters to fit over. I only had the one flashlight, so a double exposure was still the best way to go and the image above was the outcome. I had always seen color wheels and things like that, but never seen two lights combine to form a third color. It was quite amazing to see it work.

Coming Next:
Week 2 Assignment: HDR (High Dynamic Range) First look