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Posts Tagged ‘pano’

So this is my first post of 2010! Here I go…

My problem with going someplace worth photographing is coming back with 40-50GB of photos to sift through and edit. I usually just don’t have the time to go through the sheer number of images after a trip and tend to leave it for later, months later and in some cases years later. Let’s face it, post processing takes time and inspiration neither of which can be conjured up at will.  When I come back from a trip I typically go through my images, delete the ones I don’t need and roughly mark the ones I’d like to edit at some point. Months later I’ll go back and edit these images turning them into what I originally envisioned. Most of the 4-5 star images tend to go through several re-edits until I’m completely satisfied with the result. Talk about a time consuming workflow…

I recently had a little time to sit down and stitch a few panoramas taken in summer ’09 on my trip though Nordland and Finnmark in Norway.

Honningsvåg, Finnmark

Honningsvåg, the northermost city in Norway. Well it’s more like the northermost large fishing village with a city status but it sure is picturesque, especially when you see a full grown white reindeer grazing in the local school’s yard. It’s also the starting point for most tourist excursions in the area.

A beach at Bleik, Andöy, across the road from the camping grounds where we stayed for a night to catch up on sleep and free wifi. Nothing but fine white silky smooth sand dotted with patches of vegetation as far as the eye could see.

The North Cape, often referred to as Europe’s northernmost point. However, the neighbouring point Knivskjellodden is actually 1,457 metres further north. Here the sun never sets in summer, well from the 14th of May to the 31st of July.  This shot and was taken just before midnight. Being woken up by reindeer herds wondering through the parking lot is an awesome experience. This image has been in the header for some time now. I was going for an almost artificially created simplicity…

Midnight sun at the North Cape

Another shot of the North Cape. The shots for this pano were actually taken between 11 and 12pm. This sight never ceases to take my breath away. Going along with the North Cape theme this is one of the images in the running got blog header for at lest the first half of 2010.

Wiew of a sunset in the Norwegian sea off the Hurtigrutten boat we took from Tromsö to Hammerfest. Shooting panoramas off boats is tricky, especially in low light conditions and in spite of the sea looking rather calm i was having trouble hand-holding a 70-200mm lens due to the gusts of wind blowing over the deck. However, I found comfort in the fact that even out in the middle of the Norwegian sea, I had almost full cell phone reception, something my phone company can’t provide in central Stockholm.

Narvik was a strategically important port during WWII and still today is the closest port to the iron ore mine in Kiruna that does not freeze in winter. Also it is one totally awesome great place to ski. The city also has its “own” whale which will periodically wonder deep into the fjord. I’ve been here twice and so far had no luck when it comes to spotting this whale.

Lillsjön, Upplands-bro

Part of the experience of living a little outside of a busy city center is experiencing the nature around you. Lillsjön, a little north of Stockholm is really nothing special given the fact that there are about 520000 lakes in Sweden. However this tends to be where I go most often.
I digress. Photography is about experimentation. Trying out something new and figuring out how you can make it work for you and incorporate it in your workflow. I’m a little torn on the subject shooting panoramas. Yes you have to have the camera on a tripod with a pano head to avoid parallax errors in stitching later on in Photoshop, but lately the software has gotten so good that i’m really doubting the necessity of an expensive head. I shoot most of my panos hand held but make sure that I try to line up the images, shoot portrait instead of landscape, have 20-30% overlap and rotate the camera around the plane of the aperture ring as much as possible. All this applies to scenes with good light, because no matter how steady your hand is a tripod is always better in low light. A tripod and pano head will however give sharper images, especially when used with a shutter remote, and will minimize the need for lens distortion correction and cropping in post.
Going back to trying something new I heard about an interesting technique for shooting panos. When shooting hand held there will be more resolution loss due to cropping in post. Now most of this resolution will be from the edges of the middle section of the image. So the idea is to shoot a few more frames above and below the middle section, this gaining back that resolution. That’s it!
Above is the result of a photowalk I took the other day.