Nature Light Photo

Death Valley Redux – Pt. 4 – Panorama Pictures

As I said in my first part of this series, I went to Death Valley for some great images and to try some new techniques. I tried HDR and the use of a wide angle lens, but that’s another post. I also tried lots of panorama images.

The idea of a panorama is fairly straight forward. Capture more in an image than the camera lens can see. In other words, make any lens wide angle.

The execution is also fairly simple. Start taking your panorama by setting up your camera to capture one side of the image, usually the left, and take pictures until you get to the other side, usually the right. The only thing you really need to worry about is making sure that you overlap the images by about 1/3 of the frame. Ok, there is more to it than that, but for the basics, that covers it.

What you end up with is a series of images that don’t look like much. In Lightroom, export the selected images into Photoshop by clicking in the Photo>Edit In>Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. Photoshop will run a series of actions that will blend the images into one panoramic image. Save it back into Lightroom and you are done.

Below are two image of one of the joshua tree forests in Death valley that I merged into one small panorama.

You can see how the image on the left side doesn’t quite cover the same area as the image on the right side, but when you put them together, you get the entire field of view.

Above is just two images put together into a panorama so that you can see how it works. You can actually stitch together MANY images to make a huge panorama. The process works the same, but you select more images to stitch together.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.

Tweet This Post Facebook

They Closed Death Valley

Ok, not really, but it sure seemed that way.

I took a quick trip to visit and explore Death Valley over the long President’s Day weekend. The idea was to explore the national park, get some shots of the landscape, and kind of get a lay of the land so I could go back and visit with a more definite plan what to shoot next time I visit. I also wanted to take my new FJ Cruiser out and test what it out on some of the backcountry roads.

We had a major storm go through California on the Tuesday and Wednesday the week before and I was excited by the possibilities of some great clouds in the sky over the areas that I had researched before going.

I was wrong. I got to DeVa and it was mostly closed. The rangers had list of roads open had 15-20 different backcountry roads and other points of interest on it; only five of them were open.

Apparently, the rains the week before had dumped over an inch of rain in one night. Death Valley is not the environment to handle an inch of rain in a 12 hour period. It is a desert, the water doesn’t soak into the ground very quickly; it just runs off downhill. The park flooded. Every road that I drove on had signs of the rain.

Mostly debris and dirt that had washed from the sides onto the road, but some of the roads showed major damage. Apparently, those that were located in some of the canyons got undercut and/or covered in several feet of mud. The surprising thing was that the dirt roads, if they weren’t closed, were just fine for the most part. The disappointing part was that there almost wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

After revamping the itinerary, the trip turned out better than I expected. After I had eliminated some of the spots that I wanted to visit and rescheduled some others, I had a great time, got some great shots, and tested the FJ in some pretty good conditions. The FJ could REALLY use a bath right now and it will get one sometime in the very near future.

I will be posting some of those shots here in the VERY near future. I know it’s been over five weeks since I posted here, but it got kind of busy recently and I have since made a resolution to post at least three times a week.

I did get the opportunity to use what is becoming one of my favorite iPhone apps, AutoStitch. You use your iPhone to take pictures for a panorama and the application does a GREAT job of stitching them together into a very usable image.

I took two of Scotty’s Castle in the northeast corner of the park and one of my campsite near the Racetrack Playa.

The clock tower and generator room.

The courtyard in Scotty’s Castle.

The view from my campsite near the Racetrack Playa.

I also got to use the video camera on the iPhone a few times. The only one that is worth seeing is this one. After viewing it, you might be able to understand why the FJ needs a carwash. To see the video, click here.

You can see the results of the drive through Death Valley mud.

Tweet This Post Facebook