Praslin

A panorama of 4 images of Praslin island, Seychelles. The images has been taken from near the highest mountain on La Digue island.

Only recently I started to try out panoramas and it's fun. But sometimes it's not easy to find the right motif or to take the proper images. If you are not thinking twice it's easy to fail with the images. They just won't fit together to give a good panorama.

What I'm doing is: measure the exposure in all images you think you'll need. Remember the exposure with the shortest time and set your camera to manual mode. Adjust the settings to the exposure/aperture you measured and take the series of images. Focus can be different but the exposure should be always the same.

For the images try to make them overlap at least by 10%, even more. It's better for your panorama software to stitch the images when there are enough overlapping details. Also using wide angle for panoramas can be tricky as the single images are so distorted they won't properly fit together.

Another issue is the distance to the focal point in the single images. This Praslin panorama was easy as all images have the same distance to the motif. But I've taken panoramas of mountain scenes where the rightmost image focuses on a wall only 100 meters away while the leftmost image shows a distant hill 500 meters away. Although the hill is much higher in reality the panorama shows something completely different with a real huge wall and a tiny hill far away...

But in the end, just try it, make different series with different settings. You'll see on your PC what works and what not. Give it a try... :-)

See all my panoramas at RedBubble.

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Primeval Paradise

We're back from our vacation to the Seychelles Islands. Two weeks in tropical heat, strong sun, heavy rain and gorgeous scenery. We liked the islands, lots to see and explore and the landscape is really unique and beautiful.

The image has been taken on the famous beach Anse Source d'Argent on La Digue. We arrived on the island at noon and decided to walk to the beach (which took us about 1 hour). The weather was not so good and we already thought we would not be able to make good photos. Lucky us the sun broke through the clouds right as we arrived at the beach.

And you need sun to really appreciate the beauty of the rocks, beach and sea. The granite rocks are impressive and the water is crystal clear in the bright sun. The color of the sea shines from deep blue to a light turquoise. Of course there are a lot of tourists, you just have to wait for a good and undisturbed view.

Still it is not easy to get interesting images. I tried to find the right angle and composition to combine the rocks, the water and the blue sky to a perfect image. I think these settings works best when the motifs are reduced to "pure" lines, geometry and colors.

This image, for example, works for me because of the lines of the rocks and clouds. Both lines lead to the center of the image where then the pristine water is the main focus. And I even waited for a wave to come towards me ;-)

I will now work on the Seychelles images and probably will show more here. You can find all at my RedBubble site.

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(Copyright Notice: All pictures and text are copyrighted by the blog's author. You may not download the images and use it except with written permission.)