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This is continuing my series of really boring blue sky panoramas. This time I figured that if I didn’t have a really great sky, I would include a bunch of people. Josh Bradley is giving a little presentation on how to take panoramas here. I figured I might as well take pictures of him. I didn’t listen, but I imagine that he would likely have told them:

• Don’t include the sun – oops
• Don’t use a polarizer – oops
• Don’t include people – oops

You never know. Actually, those may or may not be somebody’s rules, but you never know, your picture might be great by breaking the rules.

In this case, I didn’t expose for the sun, I exposed for the people in the middle of the photograph, and let the parts with the sun blow out. I used a little dodging in lightroom to darken some of the left side to help compensate. I also shot at f/13 to try to get that star pattern. I would have liked to close down a little bit more, but my shutter was at 1/60th and with people in the shot I didn’t want to go slower.

I forgot to take off my polarizer. It was obvious in yesterdays post with the very dark sky in the center of the image. In this image, because I never got 90deg away from the sun where the effect of the effect of the polarizer on the sky would be greatest, the sky doesn’t look as blotchy as it could have.

Sometimes people in a panorama can work, but you need to be careful. I took 3 different ones, and in the other two, people were moving around, and the merge in photoshop lopped off parts of people. It would have taken a lot of extra work to use those ones by painting on the masks to reveal the parts of the people I wanted.

In all seriousness, the biggest tip I have when taking a panorama is to level the tripod. This is not the same as leveling the camera. The little bubble on the top of the tripod head, or those little attachments you put on the hotshoe level the camera. You need to level the tripod. Some tripods like my Induro have a little round bubble level at the base of where the tripod head mounts. I loosen the legs a little, and slowly push down on two of them until I get the tripod level. Now when you turn the head, it won’t move up or down as you are turning. Now, if you choose, you could tilt your tripod up or down to get the composition you are looking for. You don’t want it tilted left or right, so use your bubble level in the tripod head or the device in the hot shoe to make sure it isn’t leaning.

Go shoot panos. And for the love of all tripods that are level, try to pick out at least one cloud in the sky.

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I was in a bit of a pano mood it would appear. Here is a panoramic shot of Enchanted Rock. This shot was taken only part way up. It seemed to be a good enough view. It does look a little curved like the image, but the panorama exaggerates it a bit.

If you look closely, especially if you click on the image and see the larger size, you can see what I was calling Camel Rocks. The image below is that part of the pano taken up close. If you don’t think it looks like a camel, then you are in direct disagreement with my 7 year old.

Oh, by the way, the dark patch in the middle? I think I had my polarizer on. Not too bright.

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You have to click on this image to see it bigger. If you have the monitor space, I posted it up to 1400 wide.

This was taken not to long after we got to the Pedernales Falls state park area in Texas. Pretty place. This year however, there was not a lot of water. In fact, you could step over or wade through the narrow areas to get around. Other years there is a torrent of water here. There is a sign at the parking lot that shows the water going from not much more than this to completely covering the rock area you see in 5 minutes in a flash flood. You need to be alert. Well, usually. They haven’t had any rain in this area since December. No flash floods this day.

This was an 8 image panorama with the camera turned to portrait mode. Shot in manual at ISO 200, 24mm, f/16 for 1/30th of a second per image.

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This is the other video I mentioned yesterday. This video is mostly what I call found objects, like wheels, windows, and old license plates. They make pretty good B/W images. Again, these were all taken with the iPhone and the Hipstamatic app. Enjoy.

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Here is a slideshow of some images that I took while on the Texas Landscape Safari last week. What is this ‘Hipsta’ style? These are all pictures taken with an iPhone and the Hipstamatic iPhone app. I am using a B/W film that I will blog about later.

And yes, this is a rip off of Josh Bradley’s video. Kinda. He showed me some photographs taken with his iPhone and I was blown away. I loved the B/W effect he had going. I was already taking iPhone pictures, but this B/W effect really got me going. So, with a tip of the hat to Josh, here is my video.

Most of the images are from on TLS. There are a few at the end from the missions in San Antonio.

I will have another video a bit later with some other images. Same style.

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I think the River Walk in San Antonio is pretty cool. Yes, it is touristy, and expensive, but it is pretty cool. I think a lot of cities would love to have as vibrant a downtown area as San Antonio. It’s a pretty walk. Trees, water, rocks, bricks, waterfalls, paths, grass, flowers, and pretty views. The river walk has it all.

We have stopped a couple of times now for margarita’s. It’s pretty nice to be sitting by the river in the shade of a tree sipping a margarita taking a few pictures and people watching.

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I just realized that for a post with a title of ‘Falls’, I don’t have a picture of the falls. Anyway, this was one of my better pictures for the day.

Anyway, we spent Wednesday afternoon/evening at Pedernales Falls State Park. It’s quite a pretty place, but when we first got there, the cloudless sky was making the dynamic range a problem. The water has carved all kinds of channels and pathways through the rock. The water was low enough that the upper sections of the rock in these channels was very light. The bottom and the water, was very dark. Too large a range for the camera sensor. I didn’t end up taking too many pictures of these channels. I took pictures of several other things.
Luckily the light was hitting this tree nicely just before it ducked below the horizon. Unfortunately, with no clouds, no sunset. Still, it was a fun day. I’ll have other pictures later.

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I thought this cloud, and it was about the only cloud we could find, looked kind of like a spaceship. We didn’t get too many clouds or exciting light for a sunset, so my spaceship will have to do. I’ll have pictures of enchanted rock another day.

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We got to Bend State Park just as the sun was coming up. We waited a bit for enough light to be able to walk the trail to Gorman Falls. It is a pretty rocky trail, but probably still doable in less light. But it didn’t matter, as the light came around and onto the falls as we were there. This is just one of a bunch of images I have of the falls. I just wanted to get one up.

We are just heading out for the evening. We are going to be out late. I love shooting when it seems like the light is gone.

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We tried to see the bats under the Congress street bridge again today, but no such luck. No bats. Unpredictable nature. You would think that someone had trained them by now So I bolted up the road to get a picture of the capital. There is a lot of light on this building, and the sky is just a little too dark. Couldn’t get a good balance. I was a little too late. Waited too long for the bats. Oh well.

We leave Austin Monday afternoon. No more bat chances.

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