PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHY
photo gallery
Aspect ratio is very important to photography, and the ‘shape’ of the physical photograph can change the photograph completely.
Digital SLR’s, such as the ones that I use, record a rectangle of pixels, but my brain doesn’t always want to fit stuff into a convenient rectangle, and that is where aspect ratio and panoramics come into it.
By taking multiple images of a scene, I can precisely capture everything I want to capture, and I can let the aspect ratio sort itself out.
I take what I want, and back on my computer I stitch everything together, to create what I saw in my minds eye. Simple!
Some people say that you should get the exposure right in camera, but I prefer to capture as much picture information as possible, regardless of what the image looks like, and then I ‘re-expose’ back at the computer.
But the one thing that I really try to get right in camera, is the composition. I always see it as a failure if I have to correct my compositional mistakes back home on the computer.
That’s why I like taking panoramics. Multiple shots allows me to refine the composition to really capture what I saw in my minds eye.
And if ultra high resolution images are your thing, then you can really go to town with multiple image panoramic photos.
And they can be any shape you want them to be.
As in all forms of photography, regardless of genre, it’s the composition that is king. Composition is the only thing that matters, because without that, there is no photograph.
Aspect ratio is critical to that. It usually gets ignored because it’s widely seen as a fixed thing that cannot be altered.
Don’t forget vertical, or portrait format panoramic photographs.
This works for landscapes too, so be creative as see what you can achieve creatively.
Forests make great environments for panoramic photography. You get repeating patterns that run horizontally, and often the sky is hidden, letting the trees do all the talking.
It’s easier to take closed landscapes (no sky) as the trees tend to fill the sky completely, especially in summer.
As you can see..I love forests!
