Wednesday, September 27, 2017

I found yet more Tombstone panoramas

At last I'm coming out of the Yukon overwhelm-ment, as I've been thinking of it. I've been feeling much more perky starting earlier this week. I was working on the aurora time lapse movies and found more panorama photos that I had somehow overlooked. These are in addition to the Yukon panoramas that included some Tombstone photos, and the dedicated Tombstone photos post. If you scroll back through the blog, or look for the Yukon label, you can see other photos from my trip.

Normally I take some photos, anything from a dozen to a few hundred photos, import them into the computer, process them, and get on with whatever else is going on. Some make it to the blog, some are just for me to enjoy, and lots have nothing at all happen to them.

I've had some weekend events where I've taken more than a thousand photos, but there is a slightly different process. The computer works hard doing some automated adjustments, all I have to do is look for obvious deletes. It doesn't really matter how many there are, they get treated as a block.

Yukon was different. I loved it, but a week and more than 6,000 photos overwhelmed me.  A week of staying up way past my usual bedtime on the aurora hunt. A week of being driven from place to place while trying to remain alert for photo possibilities. A week of thinking about what would be the best shot and trying to think beyond the obvious. A week of amazing scenery, and I still can't get Tombstone out of my mind.

Many of my photos have turned out better than expected, but I have to admit I'm not entirely satisfied with my aurora time lapse movies. I'll try to tweak the individual images and the overall movie settings and see if it's better. One of my learnings for next time is to have a camera chip(s) for the usual daytime photos, but have a dedicated chip for each aurora night. Then it's easier to put them in individual folders and treat them differently.

With one camera it's hard to get both a time lapse and individual shots of the aurora. A successful time lapse needs to be carefully set up keeping in mind how bright the aurora might get and then leave it alone, hoping you've aimed at the right part of the sky. The individual shots might be taken in a short sequence as the aurora appears, and there's no concern about moving the camera as the aurora moves, or changing the settings as required.

A couple of these panoramas might look familiar because you may have seen a portion of the shot in other photos, number 6 for example. You might remember that little tree. Keep in mind what you see here is essentially a low res web version that is less than 1MB. My screen version is usually between two and three hundred MB, and zooms in for detail you would not believe. The print version would be substantially larger yet. I fell into that first one, remembering how the shadows played across the mountainside.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

One of these might well be September image of the month. Tell me if you think so.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Looking forward to reading your comment!