Panoramic Tests

Shawnee and I were down at Belle Isle again this Thursday with another dog from the SPCA, and I decided to try something new. I have read a lot about how great the new picture-stitching automation in Photoshop CS3 is compared to the older versions, but had yet to ever give it a try. I have to say that everything I read was true and that stitching these panoramic photos together worked almost flawlessly, with only a few touchups needing to be done manually. I want to do some more of these soon with more carefully planned compositions, and print them large to hang in the apartment. Not only does this process give me the ability to get a much wider angle of view then even our 17mm lens will allow, but it also makes the end result so much more detailed. These pano's all consist of between 5 to 10 photos shot with a 10 megapixel camera, which creates an end photo that in essence simulates a 50 to 100 megapixel file and gives much more detail then simply cropping one photo to panoramic proportions. It is hard to show this off on the web, but I have included one of the photos a second time at the end of this post with a 100% crop to try and give you an idea of how much detail is in these. Thats enough tech talk for now, enjoy the pictures.

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A little longer than expected

Well this isn't exactly the next day like I had said in my previous post, but here is the other photo from my shoot with Shawnee at Belle Isle. I planned on doing some extreme post-processing on it throughout the week but ended up liking it enough the way it is, so I left it alone. I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out.

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On another note, I'm happy to say that I am going to be donating photos on a regular basis to the Richmond SPCA where Shawnee now works. As an employee, she is able to take animals for the day when she is not working to give them time at the park, etc. I thought this would be a good opportunity to have some fun taking photos of the animals, and also to hang some prints up at the shelter as another incentive for individuals to adopt them. The SPCA thought it was a great idea and we are going in tomorrow to go over the details with them. I am planning on making a print on metallic paper of each animal that I photograph and letting the new owner take it with them when they get adopted. I am excited about this, and hope it will also get me started in doing some other pet portraits for people in the area. This is Piper, whom we spent the day walking with at Belle Isle after her photo shoot last week. Look for lots more to come.

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Shawnee's Belle Isle Portraits

One more philosophy paper to write and the semester will be over, and then its time for Summer! Hopefully I will be getting a lot accomplished. I would like to put all of my free time towards my photography and getting my business going, however from the number of prints I have sold lately it looks like I will be needing a real job for the Summer. I have new business Moo cards on the way, and hopefully I will be putting them to good use and getting some new clients. If not, you can expect to see a lot more photos of Shawnee. Here's a few from Belle Isle yesterday, I used natural light and a reflector which is a change for me from my usual studio lighting setups I love so much. I've got one more to show using the ring flash that is my favorite, but I'm trying some different post-processing on it so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

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