Getting Started

Whenever I present or discuss photography, something that often comes up is panoramic photography. This is a subject that, when I was starting out, was intimidating. From the swathe of tools and accessories to executing the images properly, the whole subject can be inundating for the novice.

A few disclaimers first: Panoramic photography requires a great deal of patience and a sufficient budget to purchase the right tools the first time.

I highly recommend the equipment from Really Right Stuff (RRS) here. Their gear is top-notch, works flawlessly, and holds up to the harshest treatment. You can find more about RRS gear and their pano setup guides here.

Inspiration and Ideas

My recent trip to Washington D.C. gave me time to play with ultra-low light and late night exposures, and to make things a bit more challenging, I shot a number of vantages in panoramas. “Why?” you might ask, when a similar shot could be captured with a single exposure and without all the extraneous gear? The answer is two fold.

Resolution.
By capturing a scene with multiple shots, and stitching them together, there are more pixels to play with. Instead of a single shot out of the camera that might be 8MP or 12MP, I have a 40MP or even larger image to work with. This provides for better noise reduction, crisper images during downsampling, and smoother tonality in large swatches of color (i.e. the sky in both images of this post).

Distortion
Both of the images shown could easily have been captured with a wide-angle lens–in the whereabouts of a 16mm or 20mm lens. However, by increasing the distance from the subject, and using a much longer focal length (200mm in both cases), paralax and wide-angle lens distortion is not even a concern in post production.

As promised, here’s a followup post to my original entry about my Ireland trip and a few quick tips.

1. Timing is everything, patience is essential

Whether you’re shooting a single exposure or an HDR set, timing is ultimately the deciding factor in an amazing photo. However, patience is of even greater value, as it was in the shot shown. When I arrived on location, the cloud cover resulted in all the features of the scene falling flat and lacking depth. The clouds were moving quickly, so before giving up on the shot for the day, I setup, composed the shot, ensured my settings were correct, and waited.

For just a few moments, the clouds opened up, let a shaft of light down exactly where I had hoped, and viola, I had the image.

This shot could have easily been pulled off in a single exposure, but given my tendencies for always wanting higher bit depth, I went for an HDR shot and was able to grab three brackets at one stop separation each before the lighting changed.

Perspective

The Poulnabrone Dolmen (tomb) is a tourist hot-spot, and photographing it amongst the gorgeous Burren landscape without people would seem impossible. Not so!

At the time of this shot, there were likely thirty or more people standing around, but by simply changing perspective of the subject, and at the same time strengthening the composition, no one is visible.

Those of you wondering if there is some Photoshop work involved editing persons out of the photo will be surprised to know that there is not a single bit of manipulation.

So the secret for the shot? Getting down low. Really low. I was lying entirely flat on the ground, the camera on a tripod no more than six inches high. By accentuation the height of the hill with the low perspective, anyone even on the far side of the Dolmen were obscured, leading to a fantastic tourist-free shot.