photoartflightRedbelly Turtle Panorama From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on May 8, 2021
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park looking for Dragonflies, but I only saw a few off in the distance out in the water on some plants. But by the small pond near the entrance to the park I saw this Redbelly Turtle basking on the edge of the water. It was at the bottom of the incline with tall grasses before & around it. I was using a 300mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter so if I backed up to get the whole turtle in the shot the grasses in front of it would be in the way. So I got very close and shot 15 images, 3 rows of 5 overlapping shots to get the whole Turtle in. Working on the files when I got back I loaded all 15 images into 1 layered Photoshop file. Then I used the Edit >Auto Align, then >Auto Blend to automatically align & blend the 15 images for the final layered image. After that I cropped the image because hand holding the camera I had uneven border edges around the image.
Tree Swallows From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on May 6, 2021
The Eastern Bluebirds and the Tree Swallows were really going at it to secure the nesting boxes that are scattered about the park. Quite a few are along one stretch of the main open area. A lot of activity, but they were all over the place so with the camera & lens I was using I did not get any of the action shots. I was using the Canon R with the 150-600mm Tamron lens with a Sigma 2X Teleconverter for a focal length of 1200mm. Here are a series of images of the Tree Swallows around some of the nesting boxes.
Eastern Bluebirds Return To Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on May 4, 2021
Eastern Bluebirds have started returning to Davidsons Mill Pond Park. I wanted to go photograph them but decided to use a very long lens so as not to bother them as they are finding their homes in the BlueBird Boxes scattered around the park. There is a lot of activity around the nesting boxes because the Tree Swallows are also trying to take over the Bluebird boxes. So a lot of back & forth between them. I decided to use a 150-600mm Tamron lens @ 600mm with a 2X teleconverter with a Canon R giving me a focal length of 1200mm. The Canon R can still autofocus with that combination of the 150-600mm Tamron lens & the Sigma 2X Teleconverter which helps with my old eyes! It was a fun photo outing and hope that soon the Dragonflies are next to return! I also smoothed out out the backgrounds somewhat because of the flowering trees & branches in the background to give a smoother clean background with the Bluebirds.
Multi-Image Fisheye Images
Posted on April 20, 2021
Here are some more Fisheye images taken with the 7.5mm 7 Artisans Fisheye lens on a m43 format camera. The featured image is one of my first multi-image Fisheye Panoramas. This is a 2 image Fisheye Pano taken on a gray day & light rain. With the 7.5mm Fisheye lens it seems that manually “blending” the images with a “soft” edge mask works best for assembling the panoramas in Photoshop. I then used the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter under “Filters” in Photoshop. I used the 15mm setting because the “Filter” is set up for Full Frame Digital Cameras. So the 7.5mm m43 lens would be an approximate 15mm field of view equivalent. If I ran it at 7.5mm I would get a jagged circular image in the middle of a white empty background. After you use the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter you can then fine tune your images using the “Warp” feature in Photoshop for even more fine tuning. Once you get used to using a Fisheye lens your results are more predictable and they are fun to use.
Tree Panorama From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on March 19, 2021
We were taking a walk through the woods at Davidsons Mill Pond Park to get some exercise & fresh air. I was just using my Phone 11 Pro looking for interesting landscapes on the trails going though the woods. This image was near the very end of the trail through the woods. I was using my iP11 Pro with the widest lens 1.5mm (Full Frame Camera Equivalent ~ 13mm). I took 5 horizontal images in a series going from somewhat straight on to looking up, then the final image getting the top of the trees. I loaded those images layered in one Photoshop file and blended them for my flattened image file. I then adjusted my final blended image to get rid of most of the “distortion” because of the extreme wide angle of the 1.5mm iPhone 11 lens. This corrected a lot of the “bowing of the trees reaching for the sky”. It actually came out better then I thought it would.
Fall Panoramas From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on November 25, 2020
These panoramas are from a visit to Davidsons Mill Pond Park in early November. We went mainly for a walk through the wooded trail, but I brought a camera with a 24-105mm lens in case I saw something interesting. Usually on a walk I just use my iPhone, but I am glad I took a regular camera this time. I thought the Large Pond on the trail through the woods looked interesting. So I tried a few different panoramas from different locations by the Pond in the woods. The last image was sort of strange because it was just on top of a large rock about 10 to 12 feet out in the water from the shoreline.
Panoramas From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on November 4, 2020
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to take a walk through the wooded area and see how the Fall colors were. The panoramas here were from the large pond on the Farm Road Trail. The featured panorama image was 6 handheld horizontal images, @ 24mm looking down the pond from the narrow end of the pond. For handheld panoramas I tend to overlap the images more than if I was using a tripod. When doing panoramas, the amount of overlap on the images determines the length of the panorama.
Fog Landscapes At Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on October 23, 2020
Yesterday we woke up to very foggy weather, so we decided to go out and see what interesting images we could find in the fog. One of our destinations was Davidsons Mill Pond Park. I was only using my iPhone 11 Pro using the 16×9 format with the various built-in lenses. This format does not make the images longer, but crops the narrower dimension so it looks more like a panorama. The featured image is 5- 16×9 format images with the iPhone 1.5mm lens (Full Frame equivalent ~13mm) assembled in Photoshop.
Colorful Fall Handheld Panoramas From Davidsons Mill Pond
Posted on October 21, 2020
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to photograph the Fall colors. I was only using my Canon R with a 24-105mm lens & my iPhone 11 Pro. All panorama images here are with the 24-105mm @ various focal lengths. I purposely made a series of panoramas at different focal lengths (as listed below images) and different numbers of images per panorama. I was trying to show how sometimes it is better to use more images per panorama in the beginning & once you get used to doing them you can use less images and still get the image that you wanted. Also by shooting more images than you need, you get used to how the process works and get the feel for how many you will need in the future. In Photoshop you just load all images into one layered Photoshop file. Select layers and chose Auto-Align, then Auto-Blend. Comes in handy for the times you want a wider image or taller image and have the wrong lens to accomplish your vision. If needed I can post a more step by step process blog.
Panoramas From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on October 13, 2020
We went to Davidsons Mill Pond Park to photograph a few panoramas, mostly for cloud formations. The Featured Image is of the small pond near the main parking area. Photographed from the wooded back area showing the pond from a different vantage point. This is 5 images, handheld @ 14mm, Panasonic 14-140mm, Olympus OM-D E-M1. When doing panoramas with the m43 format I tend to overlap the images much more than when using my standard Canon equipment.
