Last year Meghan and I went for a weekend snowshoe in the Sierra Nevada just outside of Lake Tahoe.  It was one of those great Sierra spring weekends with blue skies and warm weather.  Which was good as we were going to be camping out on the snow.

We hiked along the trail until it lead us to Echo Lakes where we had to decide whether we would walk around or directly atop the lake.  Given the warm weather we were a little hesitant but the snow covering proved to provide enough insulation from the bright sun and onward we trekked.  Besides, the conditions were definitely better than the last time I had been in this area where the lake was really starting to thaw..  (That prior trip pre-dates this site so I don’t have any photos to link to).

I snapped several shots of the surrounding wilderness and stitched them together once back home in front of photoshop.  This shot was a little tricky to put together as there’s a lot of dynamic range from the bright white clouds and snow to the dark pine trees.  I had to compress the brightness a bit in order to keep the photo from blowing out the whites or losing detail in the darks.

What I like about panorama shots like this is that it really helps represent the breadth and grandeur of the scene that was in front of us.  Yes, the far end of the lake really looked that distant.  And yes, the view really was that expansive.

For this shot I used my Canon G10 -  I was trying to pack light for this trip as the winter camping gear is enough to carry.  I’m satisfied with the resulting image (and the other images from this trip) and continue to think this is a great camera, even though I’m starting to covet something new..

Last year I was finishing up my visit to Germany, enjoying the last few days of the trip which we spent in the South-West of the country visiting old friends of my father.  During this visit we took a day trip from Mannheim to Heidelberg to see the old city sights (and to visit family members).

Heidelberg is a very picturesque city on the Neckar river.  An old castle dominates the scene, atop the hill above the city.

It is from this high vantage point that one gets this view of the city below.

By the time we got to Heidelberg and made our way up to the castle it was already late in the morning.  As such, the light was pretty strong and the haze in the distance had already built up.  But still it was a beautiful day and fall was just around the corner – evidenced in the just changing foliage on the far bank of the river.  In another 2 weeks this scene would look very different (but by then I’d be back in San Francisco behind a desk).

I decided to take in the entire scene by stitching together several shots into 1 large panorama shot.  (A larger version of the image above is available by clicking on it.)  I took stock of the entire scene, and decided on the camera settings – I shot in manual mode (to prevent the camera settings from changing as I panned the camera) at f/11 and 1/80th of a second.  I had my 24-70mm lens attached with a focal length of 50mm for a ‘standard’ view of the scene (to prevent any distortion).

I started by shooting an obscured shot of my hand (as an indicator that the panning sequence was about to start when I was back at my desk reviewing the images) and I then panned across the scene firing off 7 or so shots, finishing with another obstructed shot of my hand to indicate the end of the sequence.  Each of the shots overlapped with its neighbor by about 1/4 of the frame, in order to assist in the stitching process later.

Once home I made some initial adjustments to the individual images in Lightroom (adjusting overall exposure, contrast, color balance, etc.,) and then imported them into Photoshop to stitch the images together.  This is actually a really simple process where Photoshop performs all of the alignments and does a great job of stitching the individual photos together.  Once that is complete, I made some final adjustments in Photoshop, including cropping the image (since I took these photos hand-held, the borders weren’t square) and in a couple of places, covering up some of the stitch marks (scars, I suppose).

At the end of the process I ended up with a massive image – in JPG form (compressed a little) the image is an 18MB file with dimensions of 12966 x 2530.  Printed out at 330 pixels per inch this would result in an image 39″x7″ – something beyond the capabilities of my printer for sure.  By comparison, the image above is only 777 pixels wide, and even the larger linked image is only 3889 pixels wide (only 25% of the original).

As for the image itself, I like the broad expanse that’s offered up, anchored on either end by the trees (starting lower in the left and leading all the way to the top of the frame on the right).  The two spires of the University of Heidelberg and the Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit) hold down the left half of the image while the Neckar river and the Karl-Theodor Brucke (bridge) hold down the right side.  As I said earlier, the haze was pretty thick, so I tried to minimize its exposure by limiting it to the smallest amount of the frame while still allowing enough height in the image to incorporate the hill on the opposite side of the river.

But what I love most about the image is the ability to zoom into the details – whether it’s the houses on the far bank of the river or the people in the square in front of the church.

This trip was the first time I really started playing around with the panorama functionality made so available in Photoshop – and it’s definitely something that I will continue to explore.