Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

broadening my horizon

As I discovered new parts of my beloved island that I hadn’t seen previously on our hikes with Beth, Flo and Corinna (see also my post from yesterday), I played around more with panoramas. I’m trying to get a grip on this technique, as it massively distorts the scenery in front of you. Apart from getting a uniform exposure over the entire panorama, I’m also trying to figure out how to play with background and foreground as well as depth of field. Below are some of the ones I liked. Click the pictures to view them large (the large files are downsampled to 3,000 pixels on the long side. The originals are up to 30,000 pixels).

View from the patio to Porto Azzurro; approximately 270 degrees. Monday, May 14, 2012.

On the Percorso del Monserrato, Porto Azzurro; full 360 degrees. Wednesday, May 16, 2012.

On the Percorso del Monserrato, Porto Azzurro; full 360 degrees. Wednesday, May 16, 2012.

On Monte Perrone, Marciana; approximately 270 degrees. Friday, May 18, 2012.

On Monte Strega, Rio nell'Elba; full 360 degrees. Monday, May 21, 2012.

On L'Aquila, Marciana; full 360 degrees. Friday, May 18, 2012 (Happy birthday, Beth!).

June 4, 2012

birthday panorama

I’ve been playing around with panoramas lately, first on my phone and then with my “real” camera. I liked some of the results made with the phone, but the native Android camera – which in my opinion makes the best panoramas – only saves tiny files that aren’t large enough to print. At my brother’s birthday, I took a series of pictures with my M9 that I wanted to turn into a panorama later, but then I forgot about them and they cought digital dust on my hard drive.

Yesterday, while cleaning up my computer, I found a panorama software that I bought a while back and remembered the pictures I took at Basti’s birthday. It didn’t take long to stitch the ten images together, and I think for a quick shot from the hip the result is really presentable. What I really like about it is that it doesn’t scale down the final panorama so that I can make large prints from the files. I will definitely play around more with this program in the near future. Stay tuned!

May 9, 2012