panorama
On a recent trip to Arizona for rural land real estate work, it turned out for one part of it I was only about 1 hour away from the Grand Canyon, so if one can do such a thing, I swung by the Grand Canyon for an afternoon stroll and made these panorama photos of the canyon in less than ideal light, but at least a few clouds swooped in to help add some drama.
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Kiki and I took a weekend trip over to the West Palm Beach area of Florida to check out a dog beach near Juno. The night before we happened to come across a scenic ocean park that lead to a pier. Though this is officially the Lake Worth Pier, it is most know for Benny's on the Beach restaurant. I liked how this pier retains the classic look of old Florida from the 1960s. It suits the beach scene well better than modern looking piers and structure on piers.
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A view of Smacks Bayou in Snell Isle St. Petersburg Florida at sunrise - 4 image panoramaKiki wakes up around 6:30am each morning wanting to go out and depending on the time of year it is totally dark or already full daylight. At this time of year, January, it usually times out so that I get a glimpse of the sunrise. Instead of just going right back into bed as I usually do, this morning I came back inside and got my camera to go and make a few photos. I ended up hand holding four consecutive shots that I later stitched together into a panorama in Photoshop.
A suite in Courtyard Marriott St. Petersburg Florida - commercial photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-exposure HDRMy former neighbor Ryan of the Courtyard Marriott (he is the sales manager) contacted me this week about making some more commercial photographs of the hotel as it is just about finished with its renovations. To start with, they wanted to send out a new advertisement and needed just a couple photos of a suite room. So after we discussed the future photography to be done of the hotel, I went up to the 7th floor with my Nikon and tripod. As I have mentioned before, photographing a room is rather challenging and not at all as simple as one might think.
Office space in a sweet at Courtyard Marriott St. Petersburg Florida - commercial photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 7-exposure HDRThe real goal of this small shoot was for the image below, a small panorama of the room showing all its features wall to wall from the flatscreen TV to the bed. It is not made up of the two shots below of course, but from the same point just shooting one frame to the left and then panning about two thirds of a frame to the right. I then used the Photomerge automation in Photoshop to stitch the two photos together.
Suite hotel room at Courtyard Marriott in St. Petersburg Florida - 2 HDR images stitched together in Photoshop using PhotomergeI look forward to photographing the renovated historic lobby and other areas of the hotel in September.
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This afternoon I personally delivered a client's order of a 50 inch x 25 inch canvas gallery wrap fine art print. This was my first time also to see this image in print. I originally featured this photograph in this blog post. After the client decided upon this particular image, I had her measure the space she was planning on displaying the image to get an idea of what sizes would work best. 50 inches on the width is the largest canvas to date a client has ordered. The single image holds up just fine at that large print size preserving details in the image even when viewed close up.
In addition to this image, I have a large catalogue of unique images of St. Petersburg, Florida and the surrounding area available as fine art prints or for commercial license usage that show St. Petersburg's character far beyond what stock images do.
Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park 3-shot panorama - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 1/500thAn oasis of grass and community in downtown Tampa, that is how I would describe Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. I made this 3-shot panorama image of the park while waiting for a potrait client to arrive. On a sunny Thursday afternoon two days after Christmas, the park was full of people enjoying a crisp afternoon by the Tampa waterfront. I thought I would try a handheld panorama shooting into the sun to see how it would come out.
Click for 1200px version - St. Petersburg downtown harbor panorama fine art photograph - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 1/400th 4-shot panorama
If you have Photoshop CS5 or CS6 it is amazingly easy to make a panorama image. The above panorama of the downtown St. Petersburg, Florida harbor is composed of four shots that I made handheld using only the gridlines in my viewfinder to line up. Then I loaded those four shots into Photoshop's Photomerge action, led the CPU do a lot of processing, and voila, out came a panorama that I then proceeded to do my usual editing workflow on.
I am often with my camera near this small harbor as I use this location when teaching my 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons. It is a very good spot to practice making panorama images, composing with leading lines, S-curves and sometimes even wildlife.