Cola Blessings

A panoramic image of a stucture built in the 1930's and has fallen into disrepair. This building is located about 10 miles northwest of Dayton, Ohio near the corner of Union and Westbrook Roads.
As a teen I had a lawn mowing service and this is where we took my Wheelhorse tractor to be serviced.

Pennsylvania Farm

This panoramic is three photos stitched together. The lens, a Nikkor 18-200, zoom was set to 50mm focal length to minimize lens distortion and the camera set to manual. Aperture and shutter speed was set and the photos were taken from left to right, overlapping the previous photo by about 1/4. Typically, a tripod should be used to keep the roll angle of the camera level and consistent, but having the far horizon visible, the horizon was aligned with the framing grid in the view finder. No perspective control adjustments were needed and the photo fit flawlessly.

Blue Ridge Parkway

Scenic route is an understatement.

This image was created from 5 images, each adjacent to the previous, balanced, and then stitched together. The image file can be used to produce a print up to 72 inches in length without losing quality. Enlargements any larger than that would be a more commercial or utility grade, not a fine print. Of course, this is a greatly reduced version of that image file - so don't even try it.

© Paul Farrier as are all images on this blog.

Old Dixie Hwy - 25W

From Jelico to La Follette

The photo above is a panorama - 4 photos stitched together.

I first traveled this highway in a Olds Cutless in the Spring of 1968 on a trip to Ft. Lauderdale from our home in Dayton. This is the road many took because the highway that now runs the ridge 600 feet above was not yet open for traffic.

Step back and admire your work...

A panoramic image is not just a photo done in "letter box" - it is more than that.

One could use a wide angle lens but to get this much in there would have to be a lot of distortion. Or, one could get further away from the subject and then crop out the top and the foreground - but that severely limits the size of the print when enlarging. But in order for me to back up on this one, I would have to leave the trail and as I moved back, more trees that were behind me would then be in front of me.

I want to get a wide view and the only way to do that is by taking four photos from left to right with the manual settings on the camera so my aperture and shutter speed stay constant. Lapping each picture by one third over the previous, I can use a photo merge program that will "stitch" the photos together.

Swamps are extremely photogenic. I've never got so many good photos from such a small location. Only about 10 acres of the swamp were accessible. It's located along the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.

So - if you want to step back and admire the view - try creating a panorama.

The Ohio River

The past few weeks have been extremely busy but I did take a break while driving through Cincinnati to climb Mount Adams and pay a short visit to the Art Museum there. On the way down I stopped to take photos of the Ohio River where it loops north.

I set the camera on full manual, made adjustments, and clicked off seven photos from left to right. The seven photos were stitched together forming this one panoramic scene of the river and Northern Kentucky on the far bank.

The sky was digitally redone to improve the fidelity. Curves in lenses cause slight deviations in light intensity and change the constrasts from middle of each photo to the edge. This had to be corrected because the sky appeared light and dark and light and dark and light again in a very unnatural way. To correct this I chose the lightest part and the darkest part of the sky as my two colors on my palette. Then I selected the sky and created a new layer in the photo. Then I filled in the sky with a fade from the two colors.

And this is the result. The original is printable up to 90" x 20" and maintain quality.

If you want a print, double click on the image.

Panorama!

When I say it, "PANORAMA", I think I should say as if making an announcement. Saying it a little louder, and little more distinct every time I say it; with a rhythm and each syllable getting equal time. One can put the accent on any syllable and will get the same result. We've got a big, WIDE picture.
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When a 3000 pixel wide picture just can’t do the trick, why not take several, starting from the left and moving to the right? When I first started doing that I found out that my metering changes just a bit with each shot, the light changes and the camera adjusts. That didn’t work out too well when I tried to stitch the pictures together. So, what I did was switch over to manual settings on the camera, found the right exposure, and then started to left, then moving to the right, each time overlapping from one picture to the next by about 1/3rd.
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Then I let Photoshop do the rest. It stitches and blends and does things I didn't think was possible. It takes several pictures and blends them into one, homogeneous blend of color, form, and light without a hint of where they were stitch. Coooool.
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I also had to learn that on wide angle, the blending isn’t too cool. What happens is the light at the edges gets a hint darker and then it still shows up in blending. So, it’s better to take five shots at 55mm then three shots at 28mm. Going from left to right – click, click, click, click, and then click. Rather than click, click, and click and cover the same area.
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Now my little Nikon has a PANORAMA mode. It shows exactly where to overlap from the previous picture to get the best stitching. That’s cool. But I haven’t fooled enough with it to tell if it holds the metering from the first shot. I’ll have to check that out.
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This picture is from the top of the mountain in the Smoky Mountain National Park above Gatlinburg on US Route 441 and it was taken with my Daddy Nikon. I could have posted a wider one, but then when you go wide you don’t get very high when I’m posting such a small image. These images are HUGE. They can print out at least to 60 inches wide and still maintain a fairly good quality – at least National Geographic grade.
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With that, let me just say, one more time. “PANORAMA!”