Sunday, May 5, 2013

Karijini the third: Panoramas

I love panoramic photography. I have done since I saw a panoramic picture my Pa took of the Back Beach in Mornington Peninsula - this was five photos placed next to each other and framed, and I just thought it was the coolest thing!

Then of course, as you grow older you soon come to realise the King of panoramic photography is Ken Duncan - Check out my favourite photo of his. Guess where?

To capture so much information, what you are seeing is a huge challenge, especially when it requires photo stitching. I started panoramic photos when I had my first digital camera - a little Kodak. I stitched them together with a free program, Arc Soft, that came with a memory card I purchased.   The results were reasonable, maybe I'll share them with you sometime, but it was clear from the start several techniques and pieces of equipment were required - tripod, a straight horizon and even lighting.

So in our recent journey to Karijini, a place where there are simply too many places to look, I had a stab at a few panoramic images. This is tricky because of the cast of light and shadow in the gorges - exposure is a hard thing to get consistent so most of the successful pieces are actually only two photos stitched together. The ones below are the picks.

Circular Pool - Dales Gorge, Karijini National Park. Canon 50D, f/3.5, 1/200 sec shutter, ISO 250, polarized lens filter, 18mm focal length, four portrait images stitched.
 Circular pool is a fantastic place to swim, and we were blessed with the lighting when we got there - the sun was reflecting off the opposite wall and onto the red rocks behind the pool creating these amazing oranges and reds! I've found with panoramas it's good to take portrait photos instead of landscape. As you can see in the image below, too many landscape photos stitched together and the image becomes quite thin. The image above is four portrait photos, below is three landscape photos.

Karijini National Park, Pilbara. Canon 50D, f/4, 1/4000 sec ISO 250, Exposure bias +2 step, 35mm focal length, three landscape images stitched
The golden hour - as we were driving home from a day of gorging the sun was setting, casting golden light on everything. The golden hour in the Pilbara is pure magic.

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