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Do you have a list of photographs that you want to take, and make specifc efforts to get them?
Normally I don't. I'm more of an opportunist photographer, rather than one who plans their life around getting through a list of iconic scenery.
However, the scene shown here has been on my 'to do' list for a long time, and I'm so glad I've finally been able to make a reasonable image to set my mind at rest!
What's shown here is a dawn view of the beautiful bay at Llandudno, on the North Wales coast. I've tried several times in the past to take this photo (or rather, series of photos) but I've always previously been thwarted by a cloudy morning and a failed sunrise, leaving the scene before me flat and grey.
Not so on this morning though. A check on the weather forecast the day before had given me the encouragement I needed to get up at 3.30am and head for the coast.
After parking up I made the brief but strenuous climb up the Little Orme on the eastern side of the bay to await the sunrise and scope out a good composition.
I tried several different single shot compositions while waiting for the sun to pop over the horizon but none of them inspired me. In order to fit everything in that I wanted to show, the actual detail of the beach and town became tiny. No good at all.
So I decided to try a stitched panoramic instead. I've tried these before with mixed success, but the advent of Photoshop CS5 has opened up a whole new realm of panoramic potential to me. Even so, I had to be careful with technique, like using a perfectly levelled tripod, exposing for the brightest part of the scene, using an ND grad filter to tone down the sky, using a lens that didn't distort, putting the horizon dead centre in the viewfinder and allowing plenty of overlap between individual images.
When the sun popped over the horizon I was ready, and as Llandudno was bathed in the golden rays of a new day I took dozens of overlapping frames, sweeping from one end of the bay to the other and beyond.
Once I'd taken what I thought was a reasonable number of photos I simply sat by the camera for half an hour or so watching the light play over the landscape beofre climbing back down the Little Orme and heading to work.
The next day I waited in breathless anticipation as Photoshop chewed its way through the photomerge process, only to be delighted with the fantastic blend that popped up on my screen after what seemed an age. I think I'm going to need a bigger computer if I'm going to make a habit of panoramics!
A crop and a few tweeks later and here's the final image in all it's glory, and I'm really please with how it's turned out.
Filename - coast panorama 05.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 105mm
Exposure - 1/6sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - Llandudno, North wales
This image - 908x150px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS5
Comments - Images taken using a carefully levelled tripod to avoid distortion during stitching.
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