Panoramic Views

One week to go!

Just one week left to finish my exam work and complete my sketch book.

I have finally chosen and printed the half dozen or so photographs that I now have to mount and am at last feeling slightly less stressed by it all.

Not that I have stopped worrying about getting it done in time, but at least I feel I am much closer to achieving my goal now I have made some decisions on which photographs to include.

Any long term readers will know that I have been doing a photography course for the last year, and from some of the images I have shared, I guess it's obvious that one of my favourite places to photograph is the Royal Military Canal at Hythe. I shared some of my photographs and a little of it's history in an entry out of at the beginning of my course

This place is just so beautiful, it never fails to touch me. No matter what time of year you visit there are gorgeous colours lining the banks of the canal and plenty of wildlife. During the summer months there are little boats that you can hire for a trip up the canal at a relaxing, sedate pace as you watch the hullabaloo of the town.

The ducks will come and feed from you, in fact, they are so used to people on the banks meaning 'dinner is served' that they will make a beeline for you. They have to fight the seagulls off of course, but that's the drawback of being near the sea I guess.

For my exam pieces, I am required to photograph in the style of the Alexander Rodchenko, a Russian photographer involved in the Constructivism movement, who was famous for using 'strong diagonals' in the composition of his work.

Once again visited the canal for inspiration.

This is one of many shots I took, and once I had done a little work in Photoshop, the colours were slightly more vibrant than this.

Whilst working through all the shots, deciding which to use, G said he thought it would be great to have a panoramic shot of the canal.

Now he tells me!

So, in the absence of photographs shot purposely to 'stitch' together he suggested I flip this photograph and sit them back-to-back!

He's a genius! I knew I married him for a good reason.. lol

Photoshop, here I come! I wasn't sure if the theory would work, or even which sides to butt together to make the best panoramic photo, so in my natural 'cover all the angles' attitude, I tried both ways.

I didn't have the photographs at work to show you, so I have taken these directly off a Word Document, I hope the quality is not too bad.

The first attempt was strange, in a weirdly interesting kind of way.

Putting them back-to-back in this way produced an island effect in the middle of a very wide canal. I liked the shot though. I liked it because of the weird tree right on the vanishing point. The hovering tree, large in scale by comparison and eyecatching.

The original has this tree in the foreground, which is why it is large, but stitching the two halves together like this made it a background feature...

... my somewhat strange sense of 'interesting' is very pleased with the resulting questions the brain asks when it views it.

Stitching the photograph together with the alternate edges produced a very different result, and one more suited to my exam entry I think.

I love it.

Initially it is not so obvious that it is a mirrored image. Planting on river banks is often symetrical. The little duck, not very visible at this size, who has just clambered out of the water, leaving a circle of ripples behind, gives the game away.