Kirby Muxloe

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Richard Brochu-Williams

I have been taking advantage of the good weather that we have been having and I travelled to Leicestershire to practice some more panoramic shots. This shoot was not the urban landscape that I have been photographing of late but it was a good opportunity for me to practice my technique and to keep myself familiar with the software that I am using. I find that if I do not do this on a regular basis, when I come back to use the software, it takes me twice as long to achieve my desired results because I have forgotten how to do certain things. By regularly practising, I become accustomed to what I am doing and I find that I work more efficiently.

Kirby Muxloe has a wonderful castle and this was the setting for this shoot. I really enjoy visiting castles and I am enticed by the architecture. The sense of history and what has gone on inside these magnificent constructions really draws me in.

The well known British proverb “An Englishman’s home is his castle” meaning: An English person’s home is a place where they may do as they please and from which they may exclude anyone they choose, strikes a chord with me and I think that my castle images work well with the stereographic format, as this provides an environment of it’s own for the castle, suggesting further that not only is the castle a place of privacy but it can be encapsulated in it’s own little world, providing a kind of private retreat.

I am continuing to photograph castles alongside my urban landscapes and I shall be comparing the two, to see which images have produced the best results.

Kirby Muxloe Castle, 360º Equirectangular Panorama, © Richard Brochu-Williams

Kirby Muxloe Castle, Stereographic Projection © Richard Brochu-Williams

I was pleased with the results that I achieved during the weekend at both Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire & Rickney’s Quarry, Hertfordshire. It was certainly a productive weekend.

References

Oxforddictionaries.com, (2014). an Englishman’s home is his castle: definition of an Englishman’s home is his castle in Oxford dictionary (British & World English). [online] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/an-englishman’s-home-is-his-castle [Accessed 22 Jul. 2014].

Test Shoot 3

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Richard Brochu-Williams

I decided that I wanted to do another test shoot so that I could become more confident at stitching my images together and using the software efficiently. I drove out to a nature reserve near to my home and decided to shoot there.

These are the 16 images that I obtained:

The following pictures show some of the editing processes that I went through to obtain one final image.

As you can see in the above image, the stitching had not worked as well as I had hoped. Therefore I decided to tidy up the image in Photoshop.

I selected the part of the pavement that had not lined up correctly by using the pen tool.

I then copied (via layer) and placed the new layer where the missing path was.

I then used the transform tool to make the new layer blend in

Finally the clone tool is used to remove the part of the path that is no longer needed

A similar process was used in another part of the image. This can be observed in the 3 images below:

Selection made using pen tool and new layer created via copy

Warp tool used to move pavement

Old part of pavement has been removed using the clone tool

Final Equirectangular Image

Photoshop Process

After image has been transformed into a stereographic projection, there is a noticeable hole in the centre of the image. This will need to be fixed. This is done by selecting an area of existing road from the image and copying it into a new layer, which is then placed over the hole and blended in for a seamless look.

Layer placed over hole

Final screen shot after blending

Final Image

Reflection

Looking at the final image after it had been completed I could see that it was not as perfectly spherical as I would have liked. I went back to see if I could make improvements on my stitching but I was not having much luck and I even tried different software. The person that was with at the time of taking the photograph had stated that the area was a little hilly and there was an area that would have been better suited for me to take my pictures from. This was the “viewpoint area” and there was a signpost for it, which I had missed. In the future, I will have to take any hills / slopes into consideration and maybe adjusting my horizon line may have worked in this instance. I’m glad that I have found this out now rather than later into the project, as this is something that I can possibly rectify whilst on the shoot. This shoot definitely turned out to be a learning curve.

References

Morris, S. (2014). How To Stitch Together a Panorama in Photoshop Manually. [image] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6jQn2F5nk [Accessed 23 Jun. 2014].

Experimenting with 360º Panoramas

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Richard Brochu-Williams

Today I have been trying to experiment with 360º panoramic landscapes. There are a few problems that I have come across. The first being that I do not have a fish eye lens but I do have a wide angle lens (12mm) and I do not have a panoramic head but it is still possible to achieve some good results…I just haven’t got them yet.

Nodal Ninja 4, Panoramic Head for tripod

I have been trying out new software (Hugin) but after trying to get to grips with it, watching tutorials and reading online, I have discovered that it is not too user friendly, or I am just simply daft! BUT I will persevere because I am stubborn but will give it a rest for today.

Despite having done stereographic images in the past, I have not done 360º panoramic or equirectangular images, and these are the images that should be used when making stereographic images. I have just used landscape images and photoshopped them, but I would really like to try and do it the correct way and this will also be a new way of photographing for me, so this is a challenge that I am going to set myself.

However, I did manage a 360º panorama, not a very good one, but at least I achieved SOMETHING today. I have stitched the image together but I have not bothered to edit the image as it was just for experimentation.

Below is an example of how Alexandre Duret-Lutz uses 360º equirectangular panoramic images to create his stereographic (Wee Planet) images.