While I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures, I’ve mostly only ever done it as a means of capturing reference for drawings, or to use as some element in some work of a larger scale. I had some free time recently, and I put the finishing touches on some panoramic photographs I took over the past few years in my new Photography section.
Panorama: Cocoa Beach
This first was taken on September 30th, 2007 at Cocoa Beach. Specifically, the end of a private dock overlooking the beach at a resort my parents stayed at. I went out to visit them and to try out my Canon SD1000, which was still pretty new to me at the time. Took these three photos and stitched them together in Adobe Photoshop CS3 (without the aid of the Photo Merge tool).
Panorama: Rosen
The second was taken on October 8th, 2008 in the overflow parking lot of the UCF Rosen Campus in Orlando. I got stuck with a class located out there ($5 in tolls on top of extra gas to get out there everyday, argh) for one semester. I didn’t care for the extra driving I had to do, but the clouds and sunsets over Central Florida during that time of year were awesome. This day after class, I only had my cell phone on me (the Sanyo Katana Eclipse), but just had to get the sun bursting between the clouds. I recalled reading about compositing multiple small photos into one larger one to compensate for lo-fi equipment, and took it in a slightly different direction by going for a panoramic instead. Stitched from 11 shots in Photoshop without Photo Merge.
Panorama: Banana River
The third was taken on December 2nd, 2008 at Merritt Island. Standing on the side of North Banana River Drive just before Kelly Park, there’s a little opening in the mangroves where you can clearly see across the Banana River to the Cocoa Beach A1A hotels and sites. I originally intended to get a night shot, but it’s a perilous spot (for me) to shoot from even during the day, given the close proximity (about a foot or two) to traffic. These 5 shots taken with the Canon were stitched together with Photoshop’s Photo Merge tool, and only needed a little touching up afterward.