| Home | Book Reviews | Photography | Pictures | Art Prints | My Camera Bag | Contacts | Links

I’ve started to prepare for my exhibit of panorama photography at the Appleton Public Library from November 2 – December 30, 2009. I have made my 95% final selections for the library show. To see what it will look like see the mock up I made to figure out the printing size and location of all the photos. Each photo will have an information sheet showing the pictures used to make the final image and some information about the picture. Send comments to me at frank@fhada.com. Here are the final selections. Visit the show to see them in their full size and detail.

Wisconsin State Capital Interior, Madison Wisconsin – I took a panorama photograph of this a few years ago and just didn’t get the entire photograph in the picture to really show off the beauty of the room. I was back in Madison for the day and took the same photo again. To maximize the view I took two vertical panoramas with 10 photos in total to make this really wide angle vertical panorama. Notice how the angle of the building is distorted by the camera angle at the top of the photo. I removed some of this distortion from the panorama. People are blurred from the 8 second exposure. Actually, if a person is walking at a normal pace you won’t even see them in the picture!

.

Portovenere, Italy – This is a photo taken by my friend and travelling colleague, Jim Baggot, from the castle at the top of the hill in Portovenere. The island on the other side of channel is Isola Palmaria. This city is the departure point for Cinque Terre, five villages on the Ligurian coast that are best reached by water or by hiking. You can have an absolutely stunning hike between the villages with the Mediterranean Sea in sight most of the time. I particularly like the view you get of Vernazza during the hike. It’s a very common scene to see on calendars. This scene of Portovenere was taken with a point and shoot camera with each picture at a resolution of about 2 MP. Adding all the images together makes a high resolution image.

Kohala Peninsula, Big Island of Hawaii – It is surprising to find out that one of the largest and oldest ranches in the USA is in Hawaii. Spreading approximately 135,000 acres (550 km²) or about 5% of the land area of the island, Parker Ranch occupies a large part of the Kohala peninsula of Hawaii. Founded in 1847 by John Palmer Parker, the land for the Parker Ranch was a gift of King Kamehameha I for ridding the island of wild bulls. These bulls were descendants of five head of longhorn cattle given by British Captain George Vancouver to Kamehameha I as a gift in 1793. These cattle had multiplied into the 1000’s in just 21 years and had become dangerous and feral. This view of the Parker Ranch is from the main road going from Waimea to the end of the Kohala peninsula. Here is a picture of us looking at the scene at the side of the highway. The green of the fields is contrasted nicely by the blue of the ocean, with a few cows sprinkled on top to add some scale.

Kerith (Kerið) Crater, Iceland – This is a maar crater in southwestern Iceland. Maar volcanoes are circular depressions, typically filled with water. They form as a result of a steam explosion, traditionally considered to be from superheating of groundwater by overlying hot lava flows. The largest maar craters occur in Alaska. Kerith crater is right along the highway with a small sign and a small parking lot. The top of the crater is at the same level as the ground so you can’t see it until you take a few steps along the path. If you look closely you can see that I have added a bit of sky to the picture since the original sky was so bright it was completely washed out. I have also increased the flat contrast of the original image to make the colors richer. You may also notice that I had my camera in portrait mode when I took the pictures to get in more of the foreground. People add some scale to a photo like this so it’s good to include a few if they happen to be standing around. If you look at some of the other Iceland pictures you can see the great variety of landscapes the country has to offer.

USS Yorktown, Charleston, South Carolina – The USS Yorktown is a vintage World War II aircraft carrier that saw service from 1943 to 1970. It was named after the USS Yorktown that was sunk in the Battle of Midway in 1942. In 1975 she was towed to Charleston to be used as a museum ship and in 1986 was declared a National Historic Landmark. You can see this ship at Patriot’s Point in Charleston near Fort Sumter. There is a great collection of aircraft on the deck and in the hangar. I’m standing right at the end of the runway where the planes are launched using the steam catapults. One of the two catapults is directly underneath the fighter on the left. It was a stormy day where the gray clouds and wet deck enhanced the mood of the picture.

View from the Intercontinental Hotel, Seoul – I was sitting in my hotel room on the 14^th floor looking out on traffic and thought that this would make a great panoramic shot! You can see some reflection in the window on the right hand side of the photo. This area of Seoul is the convention center district and is one of the many shopping areas of the city. It was particularly difficult to get the photo together seamlessly as there are big changes in angle from picture to picture. Another problem is that the vehicles in the picture are moving so I had to do some editing to put cars back together and fix the lines in the road. If you look carefully you may be able to see some of these small changes. Note that most cars in Korea are white, black or gray.

Dyrhólaey Peninsula, Iceland – The stark beauty of Iceland is typified by this great scene at Dyrhólaey, a peninsula on the southern tip of Iceland. The main attraction in this area is an arch on the seacoast, a little west of this location. I really like this scene with the river going to the sea at the bottom of the cliff I am standing on. The volcanic sand and rainy windswept sky makes this a natural monochrome scene. Iceland is a fantastic place to visit. There was so much rain that I had to spend a lot of time removing raindrops and dirt from the images. I also increased the contrast and cropped out some of the bottom of the picture to highlight the main features in the image.