Panoramas by a newbie C&C

Can you pls check out these panoramas and comment about them about stictchin and distortion. In my eyes they look fine but i am sure something is wrong...

Panos are tough as they require balance in the frame. While these are a good start, they are just a bit flat as far as scenery. Try moving one of the central objects to a third left or right.

While not necessarily perfect, here are some examples:





Cheers and good shooting to you. Hope to see more of your work!

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If you have a moment, check out my site:
http://mcivor.smugmug.com

Very nice pictures.

jaysonmc said:

Panos are tough as they require balance in the frame. While these are
a good start, they are just a bit flat as far as scenery. Try moving
one of the central objects to a third left or right.

While not necessarily perfect, here are some examples:





Cheers and good shooting to you. Hope to see more of your work!

--
If you have a moment, check out my site:
http://mcivor.smugmug.com

Click to expand...

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Go Giants!
Best pitching in '08
Aaron Rowand?...Look Sabean! We have 5 center fielders...

Should we be criticizing technique in stitching or did you want us to comment on subject matter? Your stitching is for the most part seamless despite that being a contradiction in metaphor. At least at this scale it is. At first I thought you simply cropped off the top and bottom of a large file to make it look like a panorama. Jaysonmc makes a good point about composition, with such a wide image there needs to be some narrative present to make it visually flow from one side to the other. Think of it like a song or a story, there's a beginning and an end and a middle tying it together but each part of it needs to stand alone and yet it needs to come together as a coherent whole if it's going to be successful. Your first and second images are your strongest in this regard though I might have liked to see a bit more of the vantage point creeping into the bottom right corner to ground the foreground a bit better.

The third is suffering from being to similar throughout, there is no distinction from part to part, it's lacking in narrative.

The fourth image has an interesting sky in it but the boring foreground overpowers it. Think "rule of thirds" for this one. Moving the horizon down a bit would have emphasized the sky and made a better photograph though it may have still suffered somewhat.

In the last photo the foreground is actually distracting because there are too many allusions to something being there but it's path, it's purpose has no bearing on the image. It doesn't give grounding to your vantage point, it doesn't lead the eye into the depths of the photograph. You might have done better to stand on the other side of this path and diminish the role of the foreground in this image. The river mouth dividing the bluff and the land mass to the left if composed properly would have created the tension desired to make this an interesting photograph.

One final note on the stitching, in the first photo the clouds look like they are coming to a V which alludes to some sort of trickery in the composition of this image. The stitching is still very good as there is no discernible seam which is pretty incredible considering the moving elements of the image like the waves. Maybe the clouds were just in a V, I don't know, but it's a small criticism of your stitching considering how well done they all are.

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http://www.mydailyimage.blogspot.com

Thanks for the feedback. These are my very first panos and I wanted to see if I manage to do them without thinking about composition. Your comment was greatly appreciated regarding the object on left or right of photo as I am still new even regarding composition of photo, let alone in a panorama. Is it possible to give more information about other techniques how to compose a photo? e.g. rule of thirds and so on...

Thanks for your comments, I am sure I have a lot to learn. My aim in these panos was to manage to do a pano actually. I am sure the subjects are a bit boring except for the beach one that I liked. What I did not like in this pano was the accentuated colour after I fixed with office picture manager. I should have done it with psCS3.

When you discussed scale, do you mean that I got it right because the object was this far? Or because of lack of pixels (as I had to minimise them because flickr only allow you to upload a photo that is max 5 mb. Do you know of any other site where you can upload the whole photo esp. for panos?

Sorry for my ignorance but what is the vantage point?

Regarding the V re:cloud formation that you mentioned, they looked just like that if i remember well...no trickery. However, I think it was more underlined considering that it is a pano...perhaps it got stretched or something in the process of being stitched...

One final thing is that believe it or not I captured these panos without the use of any tripods... How do you compose panos at night without the use of a pano head as i don't have... or with something that is moving fast like a skier? Thnks

MG001 said:

Thanks for the feedback. These are my very first panos and I wanted
to see if I manage to do them without thinking about composition.
Your comment was greatly appreciated regarding the object on left or
right of photo as I am still new even regarding composition of photo,
let alone in a panorama. Is it possible to give more information
about other techniques how to compose a photo? e.g. rule of thirds
and so on...

Click to expand...

I see no one has gotten back to you. Technique comes with practice and there are so many "rules" that can apply. And the rules themselves are not necessarily relevant to ever photograph. Two things I do say that always help:

1) The more pictures one takes the better their photography becomes (try a pic a day).

2) Often times it is easier to "Fill the Frame" than go with a minimalist approach. There are often less distractions in the frame.

Rule of Thirds, Leading lines, near middle far, zone system, and others are all helpful and there are many examples on the web. The key is not to be stuck on the rules, but rather to know the effect on the shot at hand.

Cheers and good shooting to you.

--
If you have a moment, check out my site:
http://mcivor.smugmug.com

Yep got bombarded with feedback lol...

What do you think about this photo?? Tried to make use of rule of thirds for the first time with the intention to do so though I think the imaginary vertical line on the left shoul have been on the eye in focus. I also blurred the background a bit as it was a little boring... Shot with d40 and kit lens 18-55 f1/20 f9 ISO400. Thanks appreciate your feedback alot

First off I am always partial to dog shot. However, this is a terrific composition. Sure people could say they want to see both paws entirely in the frame and that it is a bit noisy. However, when you start nit-picking that much it usually means you are looking for any excuse.

This is a prime example of good composition. The lighting helps to to balance the photo. So really, most good shots are a combination of parts, comp, lighting, mood, etc. This does well in those regards.

The technicals people might niggle...noise, contrast, shadows, etc but for me those mean less the the overall impact of the shot. Just a warning in the digital world, people do look for the technicals quite a bit (I'm just not one of them).

This one works well and I would be happy to have taken such photo.

Cheers and good shooting.

--
If you have a moment, check out my site:
http://mcivor.smugmug.com

I said the same regarding the missing paw between me and me... Thanks for your comments!!!