Best of 2009 – Landscapes (Part 2)
This is part two of the "Best of 2009 Landscapes" series. Although I'm not an expert on building panoramic shots by any means, I believe these ones came out all right from what I shot last year. One thing for sure - I need to get a good panoramic head, because I enjoyed the process of shooting, then stitching panoramas. The largest panorama I have done so far is composed of over 250 images and it was so darn big, that I had to downsize it to 25,000 pixels. Not sure if I want to do that again, since it took forever to stitch the damn thing, but I think up to fifteen vertical images on a panorama is quite workable :)
Oh by the way, all of the shots below with the exception of "Zabriskie Point" were shot hand-held.
- Dune Sunset 1920x948 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Zabriskie Point 1920x675 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Golden Dunes 1920x687 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Snow, Dunes and Water 1920x638 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Cloudy Day in Mountains 1920x773 Panoramic Wallpaper
Dune Sunset
Death Valley – Part 1
I won't go too much into what Death Valley is, since you can read all about it right here. This was my first time in Death Valley and I absolutely loved it! It was only a single day trip, but definitely a full and busy one :)
I got there late at night and stayed at the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction, which is also a hotel. Man, the place was spooky!
Sand Dune Panoramas
After many hours of stitching and tweaking panoramas, I'm finally able to post some of the best ones from the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I had to resize and cut the below images, because some of the panoramas were too long.
Once the thumbnails fully load, click on the first image and it will bring up a separate window with a full version of the panorama. Then click on the next button on the right hand side of the image to view the rest of the panoramas. The images are 1200 pixels wide and they might not fit on your monitor - in that case, you can scroll left and right using your scroll-bar on the bottom of your browser.
I captured this first panorama on a small stream that was running alongside the dunes. The stream was very shallow and I simply stood on it, capturing the stream, the dunes and the mountains in the back:
Fall Panorama
Still working on panoramas from my last photography tour...it takes a long time to stitch 10-15 vertical images in one panorama, especially if each file is a 60+ Mb 16-bit TIFF file. Here is the result:
More cool stuff from Yellowstone coming!
I'm almost done with picking my favorite landscape images from Yellowstone. I was going to post them all today, but then I decided to stitch some Panoramas and see if I can publish some of those along with the rest of the images.
Here is a quick preview of one of the panoramas:
Channel Islands Panorama
If you have a chance to visit South California, definitely check out the Channel Islands National Park! I only had a chance to spend half a day on this beautiful island and the experience was unforgettable. Everything from dolphins and humpback whales to various island creatures, including the critically endangered island fox. I was fortunate enough to see this beautiful fox and I when I spotted her, I was too worried about missing the opportunity (she was running fast) and started shooting without looking at my camera settings first. The sad result - most of the images of the fox came out blurry :( I do, however, have a couple of OK pictures that I will be posting later this week, so stay tuned!
The below shot is a 14 image panoramic stitch of the "Potato Harbor", which is one of the shorter hikes on the island - about 5 miles round trip. I wish I could have stayed more on the island, because I saw so many different species of birds, plants, lizards and butterflies that I didn't have time to photograph.
Yosemite – the beautiful
Yosemite National Park was truly the most beautiful place I have seen in the USA so far. If it is this beautiful in March, I can only imagine what it looks like in Fall with all those trees changing color. Out of 4000+ pictures I have taken during our RV Trip, I would say the Yosemite ones came out the best. I still have some panoramas to stitch and I will post some amazing photos, so stay tuned!
P.S. I changed the top header of the web site last night - now it is using four random panoramic images.
Bryce Canyon Panorama
This is a very large panorama that I had to resize to fit on the screen (it is approximately 25,000 pixels wide):
Colorado Rockies
Another panoramic photo from the last trip. The full size panorama is actually much wider - I had to cut it in half to fit it here...
