Tree Panorama: Early Spring 2006

This is gorgeous! I love everything about it... the tones, the curve of the tree, the sky reflected in the small pool... this is definitely a keeper. Any way to print this in the darkroom? I think you could do a lot of fun things with dodging & burning to emphasize the effects even more in the darkroom.

Thanks Jeanette! I had hopes of working with these negs in the darkroom, but the image edges really don't fit together at all. I was unpleasantly surprised. I had everything carefully leveled and setup too. I think it may have to do with the tripod mount being too far away from the film plane on my Bronica. It may also have to do with wide angle distortion at the edges, though since I used my 75mm lens that really shouldn't have been the case.

I had also hoped to do these tree panoramas with horizontally oriented frames, but my setup just couldn't accommodate that. Then even if the image edges don't fit together perfectly I could just make prints from a whole negative strip! I did just get the right kind of L-bracket for horizontal frames though, so you should be seeing more attempts soon!

An almost mystical photograph, very good work. I can't figure out the two entirely different skies. Is that a result of the stitching?

beautiful image Jonathan, but why stitch two together, why not capture in one frame
i thought digital manipulations are not allowed here

There's no digital manipulation other than the stitching. (Which I guess may be bending the rules?)

The sky you see is exactly and only what was captured. It was later in the day which is why the lower clouds were brighter. The weather was quickly changing with one kind of cloud low on the horizon and another overhead. Which is the reason for the panorama: I wanted a view of many degrees without the distortion of extreme wide-angle or fisheye. I didn't actually keep track of the caluculation, but I think that's a 150 degree view we're seeing in the image.

Jonathon - It wasn't the difference between the lower and upper sky I had in mind, it was the difference between the top right half (approximately) and the top left half, especially obvious in the area above the tree tops. There seems to almost be a diagonal line between these two parts of the sky, diminishing as you move down into the tree. I didn't mean to suggest that there was something wrong with it, it just looks unusual and I wondered if it was natural or was a result of the stitching.

I think it's better without the reflection.

Campbell: oh, I understand what you mean now, and no, there was no stitching that happened in that area, just pure natural sky.

In case anyone is interested the photo was stitched just below where the main trunk first branches into a Y.