Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Trawling for landscapes #3 - Lake George

Eight image stitched panorama, handheld, 24-70mm in fast fading light. If I remember, I exposure locked for the middle of the frame, so there might have been some light fall off on the edge frames. Stitched in CS4 which does a pretty damn good job at auto stitching. Lightened the foreground in post and added a little punch to the colours as I have the camera set in neutral for greater flexibility in post. Given I do so much pp for colours I'm wondering if I don't use standard saturation by default rather than neutral sat. Will have to think about this. In hindsight, I should have used a 50mm and I wouldn't have that nasty distortion in the foreground... Unless I just crop most of the foreground out. Any thoughts?

My issues with this photo are lack of distinct foreground object to initially draw your eye, in fact no subject really worth mentioning save for the colour in the horizon and horizon too much in the middle. More a post processing exercise, works well for my computer desktop as it's not too busy that I lose icons in it. And the pastels are calming when I have a model crash.

For those of you who know the Lake George rest stop I took this from, it's interesting that the sun was at an angle such that the ridge of hills behind me cast a sharp shadow on the hills in the background of the frame. A few minutes earlier and the tips of those hills were a golden orange. Next time gadget!



Edit: I'll go with Ged's v. good call, the asymmetry was bothering me but in the uncropped photo, there was a pile of McDonald's wrappers (bloody bogans) defiling a memorial rest stop of a V.C. recipient during WWI so I had no choice. Good point about the downward dip in foreground being distracting. Thanks Ged, I do like it better now. Does anyone know if it's possible to get rid of stitching distortions in CS4?



6 comments:

Ged McMahon said...

Hey Hash... you are asking for comments so hope you don't mind if I do... I like all your photos... probably the most distracting element in this one is the assymetry of the distorted forground. For me, it draws my eye into the "dip". But I love the colours in the sky. Makes me want to get out and take more shots. I just don't take enough these days. Ged

Unknown said...

Thanks mate, see the updated crop. More what you had in mind?

Simon Bills said...

I agree, looks much better after the crop. The photo is all about the colour of the sky for me and the inital shot was 3/5 dark boring foreground. In the 2nd post the sky is much more prominent which is good as that's the interesting part.

Selina Wallace said...

Crop is good but lacking a clear subject (apart from lovely sky), but nothing to really draw you in.

Unknown said...

This one never sat well with me as I was racing down the highway (honestly I wasn't speeding officer) trying to get to a spot whilst the background hills were still lit up with sunset light. The thing about Lake George is there ain't nuttin' to put in the foreground. This photo is ho-hum because of bad timing and poor lens choice. I think I will go back one day when the hills are lit up again with a longer lens (with tripod) and ditch the foreground to make the hills the key component in the a stitch.

Ged McMahon said...

Definitely better, Hash. Probably the remnant tree in the left is now the only identity in the photo and probably takes over the distraction, but that's ok. Normally you would look for an element that draws the eye in, but I think this one can be pitched as a layer-cake of colours. Pity there is no water or some other horizontal line of contrast in the foreground, because that would make a nice striped sequence of hues.