Forest panorama - a Velvia tribute

[gerafotografija]

Hi All,

This is my first serious try at a panoramic landscape. The scene was too nice to pass up. The sun was diffused by solid cloud cover and recent rains have nearly denuded the coniferous trees in Charles Tilden Park above Berkeley, but the colors remain vibrant.



I am posting my two favorite crops from a 6 image panorama stitched together with 16mp files. One thing I noticed that I wasn't too happy about were some artifacts from what I assume is part of the Photoshop photo-merge process.



If anyone has any suggestions on how to avoid the worst of these, please let me know. In this particular set of images, they don't seem to draw attention or detract from the overall impression due to the rather chaotic composition. I think they are easiest to spot as sort of "sworly" out of focus bits on sections of otherwise in-focus tree trunks.

More about the process I used and a few different crops here and here.

[sdwilsonsct]

The delicate structure goes well with the subtle colours.

[francois]

It's not often that we see short distance forest as panorama. It works very well here and the colors & lightness of the scene are perfect.

As for avoiding artifacts in pp, it's not easy but you'll probably need to edit the layer masks by hand. Other tools like PTGui or AutoPano offer more options.

[luxborealis]

Gorgeous detail. Well scene, captured and processed. It takes "courage" not to show us "everything", but rather to be so severe with the cropping, paring away all the extraneous details to the final result shown here - AND to do this as a panoramic... well done!

[Matt Tilghman]

I actually really like the abstract feel that #1 takes on.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Very unusual, but very effective.

[Isaac]

I am posting my two favorite crops...

Perhaps composition is the interesting thing about this kind of picture -- there seem fewer obvious approaches and more possibilities. (Well, fewer obvious approaches below the sky to avoid CA and above the forest floor to avoid clutter.)

Where were you positioned to allow this mid-level view into the forest?

In North Carolina, over Christmas, at a friends house which backs onto a creek 30 feet below; the deck provided an obvious view straight into the mid-level of the forest, and the railing a stable camera platform. I did have the "courage" to try f22 -- and some of the branches and leaves were so close to the deck, that they were a little too blurry even after sharpening except at f22.

I think of this kind of picture as doing an Eliot Porter, and sometimes when I'm failing to see what's around me I fall back on the question -- What would Eliot Porter do? ;-)

...but the colors remain vibrant.

Burdened with too much local knowledge, I don't see vibrant colours but a hillside ruined by poison oak. Oh well :-)

[gerafotografija]

Perhaps composition is the interesting thing about this kind of picture -- there seem fewer obvious approaches and more possibilities. (Well, fewer obvious approaches below the sky to avoid CA and above the forest floor to avoid clutter.)
Where were you positioned to allow this mid-level view into the forest?
...

Good point Isaac. Now that you mention it, I think I was standing across a narrow river gully from the tree line pictured.

I suspect I did not notice the view during previous visits because there is usually a nearly solid wall of foliage, but recent weather knocked down leaves that would otherwise remain through the mild Winter around here. I'll definitely watch for other opportunistic vantage points like this.
Thanks!

[Isaac]

...opportunistic vantage points like this.

iirc along the Bear Creek trail in Portola Redwoods SP, there's a view across a deep valley, eye-level with the middle of some tall-ish coast redwoods -- when you see that much of the tree trunk they do look big :-)

A vertical panorama could work, and given the usual darkness of redwood forests duplicate exposures are probably needed as a noise-reduction measure.