Panoramas 2

 Alan shared some very impressive landscapes where he had used the Lightroom Photo-Photo Merge-Panorama (Ctrl/Cmd-M) to stitch images together. This facility appeared in Lightroom 6 and above - well worth the upgrade!

Panoramas 1

January's Aperture took comparing in-camera and software techniques for producing Panoramas and HDR images. We also touched on Focus Stacking - another technique that Olympus has now added to its battery of camera software.

First some observations from Ann - some of the pit falls of using the camera panorama setting.

This is a Crop of a Wide-angle (10mm) image of the Seven Sisters from Seaford Head

Using the panorama mode on the Fuji T-10 (vertical position) - unfortunately I haven't kept the horizon straight!

 Here - a nice straight sweep but I had a graduated filter and forgot to rotate

I like this one though not sure why there is a hot spot centrally

 Here how to do an extreme panorama by joining two in camera panoramas in Lightroom

What happens if you set the camera to sweep in vertical mode and use it horizontally!

 Above were all Fuji compact system camera - this is with the Sony RX100 in the Lake District - I find this compact does an excellent job on panorama mode

Dates for the Rest of the Season

The dates and topics for the January-May Aperture Meetings are published (link above or here)

Apologies - I have not had time to source suitable images for a montage challenge - if anyone has suitable images, do email them to me (aperture@cambcc.org.uk).

Photomontages

Original Definition Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting,gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image was photographed so that a final image appeared as a seamless photographic print. Here are two examples from around 1857 - Fading away by Henry Peach Robinson and The Two Ways of Life by Oscar Reilander

Now done  through image-editing software, referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual usage is often called "photoshopping", due to the software often used. Commonly used in Graphic Art and Professional Photographers' Studios to produce book covers, film posters etc or to generate interesting family or wedding portfolios.

 Different types of Montages - first Hockney type multiple images on the same 'Canvas'

Multiple images taken at the same point and then combined with layer masks etc

 Using special software eg Andrea Mosaic where you can upload an image and give the software access to your image library and it will create your chosen image using tiny versions of your library images. Link http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/ 

 Montage of person on background very popular with some in the amateur photographic circles and hated by others - your choice - certainly some work better than others

 Sometimes images that appear composites are not as in the case of Ian Munro's images

Copying Ideas or Plagiarism - a narrow gap

 Where Montage should not be used. This was the winning picture that had to be disqualified from the Landscape Photographer of the year as the author admitted to adding a different sky

 What to do about it?? - some competitions now require RAW files to be submitted before acceptance as in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year