Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library

Magellan and I finally made it home from our trip to Southern California. Our journey home took to the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library. Our main reason for going was that Magellan is taking a summer class from UCSD that will give her one credit and move her up on the pay scale at work in October. The secondary reason is we wanted to see the Air Force One, tail number 27000.

It was amazing to see this huge Boeing 707 perched three stories above your head. This massive piece of machinery was literally standing on three pillars.

If you find yourself in Simi Valley, California and on Hwy 118. Take some time and visit the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library, no matter what political party you belong, you will find the history amazing, and the history of his career for the early days of radio and movies through his political career.

Reflection at Dawn

Reflection at Dawn
Originally uploaded by Kirk Howard

An early February snowy morning in Yosemite National Park. This is a photo from Stoneman Bridge take with my Panasonic Point n Shoot.

What attracted me to this image is the glassy calm of the Merced River and the dawn colors in the reflection.

Back to Yosemite...

Today we are heading back to Yosemite for the weekend. It's spring time in Yosemite Valley so the snow pack is melting and the waterfalls should be flowing at full throttle.

Also Glacier Point Road is open for the summer. I am sure with the heat wave we are having in Northern California, Tioga Pass Road may open this weekend too.

I will post some new images next week. Here is a panoramic image I took in Feb. However I used the sketch feature in Adobe Photoshop Express BETA. The BETA version is available online for free.

Pano's again...

Today I am running a little behind so I have been looking for something to post. I haven’t had time to work on the post that would have been posted today. I will either post that entry later today or save it for another time. This post is going to be short and sweet. I have already posted an entry about panoramic photography. I thought it would be a good time to give you an update.

Why is it a good time to post this update? I am glad you asked. After all the rain we have experienced in the great state of California. The rain has quenched the thirst of our deserts, high and low. During the next few weeks we are going to experience a desert bloom. All the deserts in the state will start to see their wildflowers bloom in multitudes’ of colors.

While the deserts are in bloom this will make for good wide-angle and panoramic photography. Depending on where you go to see the bloom and what time of day to photograph, the images will be amazing.

Anza Borrego Desert State Park will be one of the better places to see the desert bloom. Anza Borrego doesn’t receive much rain fall though out the year. In some years it doesn’t receive any rain. However this year it has received almost 5 inches of precipitation.

I ran across a good article on http://www.popphoto.com/ if you want to read more about advanced panoramic photography, click on the link Tip for Shooting Panoramas.

Here is a panoramic image I took in early 2006 while snowshoeing in San Jacinto at the top of the Palm Springs Tram. My wife and I went to the edge and looked down 2500 foot cliff face. This is a view of the Coachella Valley. Palm Springs below to Indo in the distance at the far right. This is a stitch of three photographs. I found a fourth photo that had my wife in it and it fit so I stitched that in too.

I was using an inexpensive point-n-shoot Kodak digital camera. I didn’t have the ability to manually adjust the aperture or the shutter speed with this camera. The first photograph on the left needs to be color corrected for it to blend with the rest of the images.

Here is the before and after without some color correction.

Stitches...

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2008

Have you ever wondered how photographers take those great panoramic photographs? It is done a couple of ways. One way is to use an ultra wide angle lens like a FishEye lens. Nikon has a 10.5mm f2.8 lens, if positioned correctly (right in the middle) you will eliminate a considerable amount of curvature at the edges. Also you can purchase a special designed camera with a lens that rotates around the camera's rear nodal point.

Another way is to take a series of images and stitch them together with software. These pictures can be taken either in portrait or landscape aspect. Images are captured by panning the camera left to right.

c.1851. Photographed by Martin Behrman National Park Service employee

A few things need to be done first in order for these images to turn out exactly the way you saw it through the lens.

1. Use a Tripod. Not only will this help keep your image stable it will help to keep the camera on a constant focal plane.
2. Keep the Aperture and Shutter speeds settings constant. For example I take a light meter reading of the subject I want to photograph. The reading is Aperture 11f and the shutter speed is 1/250 sec. Keep these settings set for every frame of the pano.
3. Also I would overlap the images by 10% to 20% from frame to frame. This maybe the single most important step. I will explain why in a moment.
4. Use a remote trigger. This will help eliminate camera shake, and help keep the image from getting blurry by bumping the camera. Especially in low light settings.

After you have taken the images you wanted now comes the software to stitch these images together. This requires a program that is made specifically for this purpose.

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2008

Many programs are available to stitch these images together. Some are available online and others are provided in stand alone software. I prefer stand alone software. I use Photoshop not only for my post production adjustment, but it also comes with a great panoramic stitching feature. Photoshop is not cheap. Luckily I only had to purchase the upgrades. I very inexpensive stand alone version is made by ArcSoft Panorama Maker priced around $40.00. All this program does is stitching images for panoramics.

Five years ago, I first tried this technique with Photoshop 7.0. My first attempts didn’t turn out that great. I didn’t have a tripod, didn’t know about keeping the aperture and shutter speed constant. Plus my camera wasn’t the greatest at the time.

My next version of Photoshop, Photoshop CS worked better. Then came CS2 which I never used. However, towards the end of last year I discovered a little secret, Photoshop CS3. The program itself isn’t a secret, but the stitching function had been updated. In this newest version of Photoshop, they totally revamped and improved the stitching abilities for panoramics.

According to what I have read, most of the previous steps I mentioned above, do not need to be exact. However, Adobe insists that step three is a must. The overlapping is what makes this software perform its magic, and create nearly perfect panoramic images.

I still perform all the steps above. I feel that if I can do it right in the camera first, then I don’t need to spend much time in post production. Plus the stitching feature processes panoramics that much better.

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2008