Circular Panoramic Photosphere

I was just experimenting with a panoramic from Wales, I haven't been doing much shooting lately so I have to play with older photos, it is still only 2 weeks old though. I saw this effect in a recent photo mag and thought I would try it out. This vista is not the best for this technique, the ones I have seen are normally cityscapes, so I must remember to do one next time I'm near canary wharf. The floor of the shot is also an important part, one I omitted on this occasion. I will write a better tutorial when I get a better example.

More of Snowdonia

Another shot from the same walk as yesterdays post. This one was taken from bristly ridge during our ascent of Glyder Fach but looking back at Tryfan. I didn't use a grad for this shot or a tripod but I did have a polariser on so I had to up the ISO a little and open up the aperture more than usual to compensate for the darkening from the CPL. The exif data was ISO250 f/11, 16mm, 1/125 sec. I originally tweaked it in lightroom and then CS3 but I did another version using dynamic photo which I preferred. If you use Dynamic photo you know a lot of it is experimenting with the sliders and it can be a bit hit and miss, the first thing I always do is drop the colour saturation and the vivid colours back to zero, this goes a long way to remove the 'overcooked' HDR look.

The Castle of the Wind

I was in Snowdonia national park a few days ago to celebrate the start of summer, I was scrambling up mountains with a friend and we found this interesting formation at the top, I say we found it but I imagine there have been plenty of previous founders, this was confirmed when we found out it was called the castle of the wind, a cool name it has to be said. The name is due to the sound that can be heard when the wind passes over the mountain through the sharp rocks. Anyway this one was taken using a 3 stop soft edge ND grad and processed in Lightroom where I added some contrast and a vignette. The exif was ISO200 (I was hand holding) f8, 16mm 1/125 sec. The mountain was called Glyder Fach and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of scrambling.