The result was the best panorama I’ve put together so far (click to enlarge) and a mediocre Soundslides project.

I took advantage of the nice weather today to study for my French exam shoot some photos and collect some sound at the Wentworth Farm Conservation Area near my house in Amherst, Mass.

The result was the best panorama I’ve put together so far (click to enlarge) and a mediocre Soundslides project.

The panorama is a roughly-150-degree view of the pond near Wentworth Farm. In between shooting photos I grabbed a bunch of natural sound – nothing too interesting: footsteps on grass and mud, a plane overhead, the sound of rushing water – and compiled it into this slideshow.

I must say I don’t like the way Soundslides displays photo sequences taken on the burst setting as much as I have with similar slideshows I’ve made with iMovie, but for stories that really make use of captions and feature the standard three-minute, 18 frame formula, Soundslides is still far superior.

Today I made my second attempt at making a panorama image using Photomerge, this time with tripod and adjustable lens at hand, and the result was a lot better. Not great, or even that good really, but better (click to enlarge image).

This image consists of 17 [...]]]>

Today I made my second attempt at making a panorama image using Photomerge, this time with tripod and adjustable lens at hand, and the result was a lot better. Not great, or even that good really, but better (click to enlarge image).

This image consists of 17 frames I shot with my Canon Rebel xsi and its standard EF-S 18-55mm zoom lens. It was taken near the Wentworth Farm Conservation Area in Amherst, Mass.

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One thing I’d point out to neophyte photographers like myself is that when you create panoramas using Photomerge, each frame becomes a separate layer in the Photoshop file. If you shrink the image down (because you probably don’t need a 13,000-pixel-wide image), it can cause hairline fractures in the image. I had to clean them out of this one before exporting it, and it seems like I missed a few. I should have read this tutorial more thoroughly, because it explains why and how to prevent it:

If you downsize before you flatten your file you will probably encounter hairline cracks appearing in your image after reducing the image size. The solution to this problem is to either flatten the file or stamp the visible content to a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + Alt and then type the letter E) before you reduce the size of the image.

The more you know…

This morning, I went with former housemate James Burns and current housemate/landlord/compost-lover Ryan Harb to check out an open house at the Swartz Family Farm in North Amherst, Mass.

Joe Swartz and his family have a couple of hydroponic greenhouses set up on their farm, [...]]]>
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This morning, I went with former housemate James Burns and current housemate/landlord/compost-lover Ryan Harb to check out an open house at the Swartz Family Farm in North Amherst, Mass.

Joe Swartz and his family have a couple of hydroponic greenhouses set up on their farm, and they opened one up to the public today. We were among a handful of people who showed up to get a tour.

I took a lot of pictures, and ended up incorporating our trip into my third installment of the 12 Hours in Photos series.