Posts
The image appears here very small but in fact it is a 7 image stitch from my 1Ds2 (camera vertical). The print size at 240 dpi is 19 X 76 inches. Click on image to get larger version.
The composition is grossly asymmetrical with the large out of focus background sand on the left. It still works for me but I'm interested in other people's opinions.
This reminds me that I have had several insightful comments in the past and they are much appreciated but of course blogspot does not give me the email address of commentors so let me just say thank you to all of you who have significantly added to the value of this blog.
Stitching was done with PTMac. Despite my best efforts at stitching I could not get the error down below a maximum of 10 pixels which is really too high. This sometimes happens. I could have reduced the error had I been willing to tilt the images relative to each other - why that should stitch easier I don't know but I think it might have something to do with the horizon. I deliberately lowered the camera so that it looked horizontally at the driftwood but suspect in hind sight that even so it was at the level of the top of the driftwood, not the middle. Stitching with the horizon not accurate results in the images splaying in an arc, high middle, low either end and I didn't want this.
In fact, when I output the stitch to multi image tiff (to maintain 16 bit) I was able to bring the 7 images back into a single layered image, use white masks into which I paint black to show the previous layers and do some careful edge design so that misalignment of pixels did not occur in the middle of a line. The result is the seams are invisible, even at 100% on screen.
I used to combine the images using a black mask into which I painted white but there is a bug in Photoshop that shows the original vertical seam even after you paint 100% into the black mask where you want it - somehow I'm only painting a maximum of 99% - or some such figure - strange - but using white and painting black works just fine.
I had a lot of fun with the driftwood in Tofino. Surrounded by logging country and facing the Pacific Ocean, next stop Japan, there are a lot of driftwood piles some of which have the most amazing patterns to them. I'd like to produce an entire portfolio of driftwood if I can find 12 - 15 images which are sufficiently different - I think I can.
2 comments:
I really like the long panorama of driftwood curly-cues, but do find that the hole with the out of focus sand in the background keeps pulling my eye away from the subject matter (the patterns) and pulling me away from a full reading of the image from left to right. My eye keeps wanting to spring back to that hole. Beacuse it is so different from the rest of the scene, it becomes a powerful element and in this image I believe a bit of a distraction. I like where you are going!
I agree with Scott. The out of focus sand is distracting and draws attention away from the subject: the interesting patterns in the driftwood.
Having said that, I generally like how the driftwood flows from left to right, I think the patterns on the left are especially interesting, and the sense of irregular repetitions is especially intriguing. I wonder if there isn't a way for you to crop this image into three or four separate frames of equal size that would preserve the advantages of the composition and mitigate the disadvantages. If this were a triptych where the "sand blob" was truncated (and not continued in the next frame), you might have a stronger presentation.
Post a Comment