photoartflightImpressive Cloud Formations @ Davidson’s Mill Pond Park
Posted on November 20, 2022
A few weeks ago we went to Davidson’s Mill Pond Park to take a walk through the woods. On the way to the path going through woods we noticed the cloud formations were very large & impressive. So I shot a series of multi-image cloud panoramas and some single image cloud views with my OM-D Mk1 with a 7.5mm Fisheye lens. Even with a 7.5mm Fisheye lens with a FOV 180 degrees I had to shoot multiple image panoramas to get the cloud formations in the shots. Because I was using a FishEye lens I had to de-fish the images with the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter in Photoshop before being able to blend the images for the panoramas. The Featured Image was a 3 Image Panorama taken with the OM-D 1 with the 7.5mm lens.
Patriotic Tractors On Display
Posted on October 10, 2022
We have quite a few farms where we live now and it is fun to see fields of corn, cows, pigs and other farming activities. Which is strange because there is also lots of corporate buildings and retirement villages also. But it fun to see the mix of all of these together. There is one farm we pass as we are going to a local Preserve to photograph landscapes, dragonflies and birds with a display of tractors on their front lawn. These images were taken with a 14-140mm lens on a Panasonic m43 GH2 @ 140mm. (Full Frame Camera Equivalent 280mm). For this series I used PhotoShop for the Panoramas because I did not want to go uninvited on their Property.
Sleeping Mute Swans At Brigantine
Posted on January 25, 2022
At the end of the Wildlife Drive at Brigantine there is a nice corner view of Doughey Creek. Sometimes you can see an Eagle off in the distance in the trees that are not visible from the other main Wildlife Drives. On this visit there were a couple of Mute Swans sleeping close to the Drive right before you exit the Drive or before you can go around for another visit on the Drive
Raindrops At Plainsboro Preserve
Posted on April 23, 2021
The other day we went to take a walk at the Audobon Plainsbore Preserve. It was a gray day but it is a nice location to walk, never knowing what you might see to photograph. It started to rain so we started heading back to the car. Along the way I noticed the raindrops looked interesting in the water along the path. I was using my iPhone iP11 Pro with the 6mm lens (Full Frame Equivalent Field of View ~ 52mm) since it was more weatherproof than my Olympus camera I had under my jacket. I quickly took 9 images thinking at least one might have interesting raindrop patterns in the water. As I was working on the images I thought why not use all 9 images to get even more raindrops & maybe a more interesting & colorful image. The Featured Image is 9 images, auto-blended in Photoshop. Blending the image allowed an assortment of colors from the sky in the water as the clouds were moving overhead. This gave an interesting blend of colors. The image below is just 1 of the images that make up the blended image. Which do you like?
Foraging Sandhill Crane Panorama
Posted on February 7, 2020
I am still working on images from our trip to Lake Woodruff NWR in Deland Florida. But I thought it might be interesting to show how I am working on hand-held multi-image stacked panoramas of moving Sandhill Cranes or other moving subjects. This panorama of a foraging Sandhill Crane is made from 5 handheld images, assembled & aligned manually in Photoshop. Sometimes Photoshop does a good job aligning them automatically, but for handheld I tend to align the layers manually. Then edges are blended with soft edge masks in different layers to blend images to fit. On moving subjects you need to shoot more images than you normally use so you have a choice of areas to blend in for the final since the Crane is moving. Blank areas are filled in with the content-aware fill feature in Photoshop. Images were taken with a 300mm f/4 lens. Final image is 22″ x 26″ @300ppi. Once you do a few you get a better idea of sections you need to photograph and how much overlap you need. For the Cranes I concentrated on photographing the head, neck & legs for one main area and then a couple more shots for the bulk of the body. I let Photoshop align & combine the head and leg images, then the bulk of the body. After that I aligned those 2 main sections for combining into the basic full image. There were some blank areas in the background edges, so I used Photoshop’s “Content Aware Fill” to fill in the main blank areas. When first starting it is best to shoot more images than you need. This gives you more options for the panorama. It is better to have too many images than not enough. After practice you will see that you get a “feel” for how many images you need. On a moving “subject” I concentrate on leg areas and then head & body areas. On this example it is more legs & head, then body areas since the head was angled down.
Screen grab above showing area to be filled in using content aware fill. Below are images that made up the final Panorama. The first 3 are for the head & feet, the last 2 are for the bulk of the body and top background area.
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