March 2007 - Posts
I've been using the inbuilt Photoshop Photomerge tool for about 2 years with pretty good results, but was having a lot of trouble with some of the canyon shots from the US trip trying to get a good merge. The preview view in CS2 Photomerge is simply too small to work out if the placement of the images is correct. For this pano, I used a tool called
The Panorama Factory, which uses the old style of merging where a series of points is defined in each overlapping image so assist the software with the merge.
One of the nice features of the tool is that the warped images produced during the merge process are saved, which makes applying manual touch-ups to fix up ghost blurs much easier. You simply bring in a section of the warped images, overlay over the blur, and feather-in with a soft brush. I managed to get 7 images perfectly merged with no lines visible even when viewed a full resolution.
When I bought a sleeping bag rated to -15 degrees, it seemed like real overkill. After all, Australia has never, ever recorded a temperate that low (-9.4 at Charlottes Pass on 29 Jun 1994 is our lowest ever recorded temperature). Camping up at Mather Camp Ground on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on my first night in the States, it seemed very cold. The next morning, I was having breakfast in the Marketplace dinner, and they mentioned it got down to 7 degrees. It seemed a lot colder than that, until I mentally switched over to farenheight. 7 farenheight is -14 celcius, and it was a bit cold even in the -15 rated sleeping bag. I was trying to set off my flash in the tent during this shot, and managed to drain 12 AAA batteries during the exposure.
[Update: The -9.4 at Charlottes Pass was in farenheight, which is -23 celcius, so the sleeping bag wasn't that extreme after all]
Antelope Canyon is actually on Navajo land just outside Page, Arizona, and you need a Navajo escort to get into the Upper Canyon. I went on the photographer tour with
Antelope Canyon Tours, and it was well worth the money with the extra time and help we got in the Canyon. During this shot, the guide was actually standing beind me throwing dust and sand off the floor into the light shaft so the camera could pick it up. If you go to the Canyon, make sure you where some warmer gear, as its a least 10 degrees colder once you get inside.
One thing that this shot doesn't show is how cold it was here - something like 10 below zero on the celcius scale. Most of the other photographers coming from warm hotel rooms didn't last too long. I was in full thermals, then long hiking gear, with Gortex on top for warmth. In addition, I got a litre of hot drink into me before heading off to photograph. Bryce is a magical place - it's hard to grasp the scale until you focus in on the full size trees in the amphitheater, and realize this stitched image takes in a number of kilometers of scenery.
At the end of my trip in Zion I had a real adventure on the Sunday afternoon while attempting to drive up to the Kolob Reservoir. The road up to the Reservoir goes through some of Zion's highest country, and as I drove up the road the snow kept getting deeper and more frequent. As I got towards the Lava Point trail-head, there was a family stopped by the side of a snow patch, and I waited for them to clear the road and gunned the Ford Explorer I was renting to try and get through the snow, which didn't look that deep to me.
About a third of the way through I got beached on a thicker patch of snow, with none of the wheels touching the road. As I was chocking wood and rocks under the wheels to try and get some traction and reverse out of the snow, I left the car in slow reverse to get the stuff under the wheels further. As I was doing the passenger-side wheel, a gust of wind blew the drivers door shut, and as the wheels where turning slowly in reverse, the anti-car jacking system kicked in, and auto-locked all the doors.
This left me locked out, with a hire-car in slow reverse (and with a cliff a hundred or so meters behind the car), and the snow that the car was beached on slowly melting from the heat of the engine. Thankfully, the family by the side of the road where extremely friendly locals, and we got the jack extension arm from their truck, and unscrewed the radio aerial from the rental car, which after some bending, could make it through the gap between the door of the car and the roof. The door was being prized open with the jack extension arm, and we could eventually get the areal to make contact with auto-window controls and open the window. The local family then towed me out.
I bought a dent-puller when I got to Las Vegas, and spent an hour or so doing some amateur panel beating in a North Las Vegas car park fixing some of the more creative attempts I used to get into the hire car. Thankfully, the car was in an appropriate state when returned to the hire company to avoid any charges .
I'd especially like to thank the family from Hurricane UT that where instrumental out of the snow - much appreciated.
There was a fantastic full moon on my first night down in the Grand Canyon. This is a shot of Bright Angel Creek (the tent sites are near the trees) in moonlight. This photo is totally untouched - this is how it came out of the camera. Its a pretty magical place.
This is one of the incredible things I saw driving between Flagsatff and Page, AZ today:
Wupatki Pueblo