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First Simple Panorama

Do you remember your first simple panorama?

The first attempts in the pre-smartphone era wasn’t all that easy!

Jaro Kurimsky
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Before we discuss your first attempts, let me show you mine. It was March 2006 and at that time I was shooting with a bridge camera Fuji. My very first attempt sprung from an intuitive impulse I decided to follow. I just took two shots next to each other. I had the polarising filter on and automatic settings, as usual. This was the result:

volcanic mountain yellow colour
Yellow mountain – Montaña Amarilla, Tenerife, Spain

Few days later, I made another attempt:

tourist resort on sunny day
Playa Las Americas, Tenerife, Spain

The result was almost the same, right? That’s probably because the same action produces the same reaction. I pondered these two photos and deduced that the way in which I move the camera affects the polarising filter and radically changes the colours and brightness level of the picture. Another observation was that the Adobe Photoshop “stitching” function leaves white spaces around the border, which is not good!

The following panorama was already completely different:

tourist resort on sunny day version 2
Playa Las Americas, Tenerife, Spain

  • Removed the polarising filter
  • Changed the camera orientation to vertical
  • Took 3 shots

Unfortunately, I don’t have the original photos to try to recreate it and see how exactly it came out of  the Photoshop stitching module. On occasions like these, I always remember why it’s important to keep all pictures you have taken. I can still remember that I had to crop it and fill a few empty spaces, but it was done in a couple of minutes.

One year later, I took my fourth panoramic picture on sunny Bournemouth. Here it is:

panoramic photo of poole/bournemouth beach on sunny day
Sanbanks, Bournemouth/Poole beach, United Kingdom

As you can see, I followed my previous observation about how to take panoramic photos but it’s still far from how my process works today. Perfecting my technique took me another year and now I’m proud to say I haven’t found anybody else who’s using the same technique as I do today.

sunset on the beach with orange colour illuminated clouds
Playa de Troya beach, Tenerife, Spain

How was your first panorama?
Leave me your picture in the comments section!