Saturday, February 24, 2007

Stitching Old Images


I shot this several years ago and have shown a single image in colour for some time - it generates lots of comments but no sales. Tonight I was going through the files in Bridge and noticed that I had shot two images hand held with a 17-40 @ 17 mm. on my 10D, simply swinging the camera a little between images. I can't remember if I ever tried stitching the pair (they were meant for stitching) or not but anyway tonight I did - no problems using PTGui - good result. I liked the result in colour but felt it was a bit gaudy so converted it to black and white and made some further contrast and local adjustments and I like this result.

The image was shot at the top of a ladder looking into a huge old water tank - about 40 feet across and 20 feet deep, the sides rusted and the bottom with about a foot of water and assorted growth. Beams across the top of the tank gave the odd radial shadows on the water. It was shot at noon so most of the tank is lit (I live in Calgary, so the sun is never right overhead).

It does bring up the point that if you don't do the stitching you planned, you may miss out on some good images. With stitching more automatic these days (no need to select dozens of control points manually any more), there's not a lot of excuse for not checking out the results of any stitches you intended.

2 comments:

Paul said...

Hmmm, it makes for a good abstract.

Chuck Kimmerle said...

Wow, took me a while to get my bearings with this photo. At first it looked upside down and I was totally confused...but in a GOOD way. Any photo I can spend that much time exploring must be a good one (at least to me)