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Here's a view that I'm very familiar with, the West Shore at Llandudno on the North Wales coast.
This beautiful part of the world is a regular haunt for my wife Liz and myself, as we'll often stop here to sip on a coffee, go for a walk along the beach and watch a stunning sunset.
On this particular evening in mid summer the tide was right out, revealing acres of golden sands, while the low angled sun to the northwest was splashing rich, warm light over the landscape, right out to the headland at Penmaenmawr on the far side of the tidal beach.
Wanting to photograph the scene while the light was this lovely, I was in a quandry as to where to point my camera, as just capturing a snippet of the view laid out before me somehow diminished the effect of seeing the whole view at once.
So the obvious answer was to create this panoramic collage, taking in the full sweep of the beach, from the promenade right out to the end of visible land at Llanfairfechan in the far distance.
My technique for creating such an image is quite disciplined, with my camera set to portrait orientation, mounted on a carefully levelled tripod, with the lens zoomed to about the middle of its range and with the horizon bang across the middle of the frame.
All these preparations are to allow me to take a set of overlapping frames, with minimum lens induced distortions, to be merged together later on in Adobe Lightroom.
Keeping the lens induced distortions to a minimum while shooting really helps Lightroom produce a top quality panorama, requiring much less geometry correction and cropping than would be the case with a less controlled approach during the shoot.
I was delighted with the final result, an image that captures all the loveliness of that gorgeous evening at the seaside.
Filename - llandudno west shore panorama 02.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 96mm
Exposure - 1/80 sec @ f11, ISO400
Filters - 2 stop neutral density graduated filter used to balance the exposure
Location - Llandudno West Shore, North Wales
This image - 1200x155px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and PhotoShop CC
Comments - Panoramic image made by stitching multiple exposures
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