Central Park Path (Cedar Hill)
2 frames.
Category: montage
Church & Flower Shop
Again… just walking around… this is photomerged with PS CS3… I shot four frames, but one of them is barely used in the shot. This sort of thing is the easiest to do since you just walk from one spot to the next and stay perpendicular to the subject… No distortion to futz with… These sort of big prints really don’t come across well with my 650 px limit in the blog… but you get the idea.
Bethesda Montage #1
I’m not really sure if this is some crazy dead-end, but I’m still playing with the montage thing. This is the result of 4 horizontal shots. It’s still a bit messy in some parts. But it does give me the ability to do very large prints without interpolation; as well as to have a great amount of detail in the shot. It is not the same as a panorama camera because the angles used are so different, but a similar result I guess.
* * *
Oh - how it’s done.
I try to find a vertical where all parts of it will be somewhat interesting. Maybe some good clouds at the top, or overhanging trees.
All done on a tripod with some guide marks I made so that the camera is at least aligned for the vertical. So I’m picturing the finished montage in my mind. There are four shots - all horizontal. The bottom two are usually done with a wide lens, the 20mm or the 30mm and as I move up to the top two shots I use a 50mm lens. I try to overlap the shots.
Nothing is going to line up perfectly because of the change in angle. So I run to photoshop, and arrange the four shots on a big canvas. I usually have to resize each of the frames to line up somewhat with the frame next to it.
Then it’s all photoshop adjustments. For example, in this shot, the exposures are all different, so each frame has it’s own exposure adjustment curve.
Then the merging - once they’re somewhat lined up, I use the clone stamp (where it’s addressing all layers) to try and smooth out the joints between frames.
After that I generally flatten the image and then do some more cloning, and whatever exposure curves are necessary for the entire image. It’s definitely time consuming. The resulting image is damned big, and as I say, the detail, closeup is fantastic. But I don’t feel I’ve found the right subject yet.