In between workshops last year I went scouting to find new locations. Although a late morning shot, the clouds and moon made it appealing to me to process.
I look forward to seeing some of you out there this year! ✌🏼
Sony A7R2
Canon 11-24@24mm
A vertical stitch of many horizontal images, then cropped
f/11
1/500
100 ISO
amazing shot with superb detail and colors all around. how were you able to take the many shots you stitched together without showing moon movement? no nits to pick. great composition. thanks for sharing.
Huge thank you for the compliment. When I am doing a stitch like this, and feel like it might mess with my sky, immediately after finishing the stitch, I will take a single shot of the sky at the appropriate focal length. Then I can use that extra single shot to blend in when necessary. In this case, because the scene is so wide, I took a separate image of the same sky (immediately following the stitch) which was blended in seamlessly after creating a color channel sky mask. Because there is almost no blue in any of the land, using a blue channel mask (because in that channel the land and the sky were dramatically separated, and contrasted, naturally ) and adding a little bit of contrast to it, allowed me to grab all of the sky VERY easily. Which, of course could be inverted so that I had a perfect land mask as well. I hope that makes sense. Simple color channel masking 101.
volhoosier wrote:
amazing shot with superb detail and colors all around. how were you able to take the many shots you stitched together without showing moon movement? no nits to pick. great composition. thanks for sharing.
A little secret tip… Don’t tell anyone. 😊. Get back into some cracks and very slight alcoves that don’t seem like much. Then take the iPhone and choose the ultra wide angle (12 mm) but use the panorama mode! Then horizontally pan (meaning the camera angle) from your feet, vertically all the way up to the sky and even further back behind you a little bit.
It’s a perspective that no one can see with their human eyes!!! The spot here I can guarantee nobody has photographed except for my clients. I stumbled on this technique experimenting and it yielded a tremendous amount of incredible unique images. I took this image to show my clients the possibilities. They couldn’t believe it and they went nuts! And then I showed them how to do an ultra wide angle stitch (I used the nodal point as well).
We even had a person with us that had been to this location maybe over 1000 times! They literally live here, And make a living, taking people to the area to take photos. They have seen photos from thousands of people over the years. When I showed that person my “test shot” using the iPhone they literally said point blank: “NO ONE has ever photographed those spots like that!“ The person said they couldn’t believe it.
I love it when we can stumble on a new technique that can yield brand new and fresh images that nobody has taken before! I know that’s a big thing to say, but when you see how it was taken, it makes sense. No one standing at this location can see this composition, or its potential. And when the moon came out when I came back on my own, it was a no-brainer!
dbehrens wrote:
Hard to imagine needing to stitch at 11mm but I love the perspective and the moon capture!
A huge thank you. That is a very good question! Because it was bright the scene did not need a long exposure. And the exposure for the area with the moon was a single exposure. At 11 mm I pointed my camera down by my feet for the first shot. The camera was at 11 mm and was horizontal. Then I rotated the camera with about 1/3 overlap vertically in manual exposure mode. And repeated until it was pointing straight up. Then all I did was stitch the extremely wide panorama together and Photoshop as a raw panorama.
If for some reason, the moon was warped in a scene like this, I would just make sure to shoot a shot straight at the moon at the same focal length, for the stitch. And if the stitch warped, the moon, you could always clone the moon out, and then place it back into the same spot with the shot that had no warping. For me, if I ever had to do that, that would be simply overcoming the limitations of my camera and lens. It would still be a real photo.
Here only adjustments and corrections were necessary.
The main thing is visualizing such a thing. What you see here cannot be seen by the human eye! If you stand as far back as you possibly can, with your back to the wall, and you use your iPhone at 12 mm, and you have your camera in a horizontal orientation, and you use the panorama mode, you can pan from your feet all the way up to the sky and even slightly behind you!
This was just pure experimenting. But when I saw the panorama, I knew instantly that this spot and many other spots had insane potential that people could not possibly see with their human eye. It has opened up so many opportunities for fresh and new images in places, people have never thought to photograph.
The iPhone would not produce a high enough quality image. So that’s why I went back and use the 11 mm for the grand stitching.
Just try it and you’ll see. If I get a chance, I’ll go back to my iPhone shots and try to find some of them (and post here) for reference.
volhoosier wrote:
amazing shot with superb detail and colors all around. how were you able to take the many shots you stitched together without showing moon movement? no nits to pick. great composition. thanks for sharing.
