Shooting and Editing Panoramas: Part Two

Thanks for stopping by! This is my second installment of my “shooting and editing for panoramas” series. The goal is to showcase a few photos from my panorama collection and provide insight into my techniques for you to improve your own shooting style. Along the way I will highlight the positive aspects of each photo. Additionally, I will include some thoughts on things I should have done differently.

I hope this series helps you improve your photography and please, leave some thoughts in the comment section on ways you think I could have shot these panos better. Here we go….

Last summer we took a trip to Colorado and one day we found ourselves touring the campus of the University of Colorado @ Boulder. Being a sports fan I had to take a look at Folsom Field, home of the Buffalos. Needless to say it was quite impressive!

Folsom Field was built in 1924 and exhibits much of the same architecture (Tuscan Vernacular Revival) of the rest of the campus in Boulder. Some of that style is evident on the left side of the photo.

As usual, my goal in shooting stadiums like these is to showcase it’s sheer enormity as well as include some of the smaller details, if possible, that make each structure unique. My main piece of shooting equipment on this day was my brand new Samsung Galaxy S8. At the time one of it’s main selling features was it’s 12mp camera. I enabled the panorama feature and clicked away. A mistake I realized as I reviewed the photo in Lightroom a few weeks later.

Overall I am quite impressed with the quality of this photo straight out of the phone. The color, tones, and sharpness are quite good. Distortion is definitely held in check other than some curvature seen in the back of the end zone.

My only adjustments in Lightroom were for contrast, clarity and a slight bump in vibrance. I like that!

My mistake in shooting technique was mainly shooting with my camera in the landscape orientation. This resulted in cutting off, both, the end of the field(in the foreground) and the top of the suites in the upper right portion of the photo.

So, what do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below! This is an educational community and I can certainly learn from you guys as well. Hit me up:)

Shooting and Editing for Panoramas…

Over last few months I’ve decided to compile a portfolio of photos that I think are some of my best shots from a variety of places and reformat each into a panorama image. Some were shot purposely for the ultra-wide format and some were not. I feel like the panorama format gets overlooked in these modern times given the popularity of the 1×1 format of Instagram.

This post is meant to be educational in nature. For photographers I hope it helps you make your learning curve a bit more shallow. And should you have any questions on this genre or techniques please fell free to reach out to me. I will help any way I can.

First up are recent shots from High Point Stadium at Rutgers University(the birthplace of college football, btw). I always love seeing shots of these type stadiums from this perspective. For me the panorama really brings out the magnitude of the size as well as the nuances of each complex.

The first photo is from my smartphone camera set to panorama… Not bad for a 12mp cell phone shot. During the editing stage I mainly adjusted the highlight, whites, and clarity sliders. Vibrance and saturation remained untouched. I printed this on 13×19 paper with my Canon Pixma Pro 100 and that’s where the cell phones deficiencies are quite evident.

The shot below is a series of brackets with my Olympus OMD EM5 Mkii with a 17mm 1.8 lens . I stitched 3 frames together in Adobe Lightroom to create this panorama. In post I had more emphasis on the vibrance and saturation sliders and having not exposure bracketed I had to decrease the highlights significantly. It brought back the details in the sky, thanks RAW format.

I printed this photo on my  Pro 100 and it produced a fantastic result. Sharp front to back with seamless tones and great color rendition.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post. Look out for more on my panorama photos here on the blog and I plan to have many available for print over on my website .

Thanks until next time!

Monster Series Squared….

I’ve just released the first three prints in the monster truck squared series. These pieces really pop with the light colored background! These will look fantastic in a younger boys room or even a man cave.

Quick ship prints for these trucks is available in sizes of 8×8 and 12×12. They will be available on a wide variety of high quality photo papers such as gloss, luster and semi-gloss.

If you have any questions please leave it in the comments section or FB pm me over on my FB Page .

Another Exciting Series….

A week or so ago I posted about the progress of my monster truck series here . This morning, over on my Facebook page, I announced an offer for another new series of Fine Art greeting cards. I’m really excited about both of these projects but I’m very excited about the first production of these greeting cards. The first batch include shots from my area of New Jersey, the Jersey Shore.

These cards are produced on high quality card stock and include matching envelopes. If you have any interest please click on the link above or please FB PM me or email me @ mattafoto@gmail.com.

Here’s a look at the first three in the series….

As always, thanks for stopping by and please feel free to share this exciting news!!!

Exciting Series Coming Soon…

So I’m finally seeing some significant progress on an idea I’ve had for many months. I’ve been gathering ideas, building an in-home product studio, taking photos, setting up online selling sites among other things.

I also recently added a teaser video on my website, here. But I also thought I’d present one of the first production photos here as well. I’m excited to see where this idea takes me. The possibilities are endless.

So if your in the need of decor for grandson, son or nephews room and are looking for something unique and priced just right. Stay tuned, big things are coming….

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to share the news!!!