Crazy Close Macro Shots

Playing around today with a new macro lens attachment we got.  Its an adapter that fits over our 200mm canon lens.  The macro adapter is the MSN-505 Super Macro lens by Raynox.  Here are some results from our front yard.  I'm seriously considering giga-panning with this macro and these tests are promising:

Inside of a Dandylion

Fuchsia 1 - Petal and Stamen

 Fuchsia 2 - Intersection of Petals

Wild Night Panorama of San Francisco Pier 14

It takes and hour and a half just to drive there and my first trip was a bust. I can't blame the weather, or the location, or anything reasonable.  I just forgot my tripod!

But the second time I drove down to San Francisco's Pier 14 I came back with the images I needed to produce this beautiful polar panorama.

It is not often that I am able to take an vision from conception to completion without the project bucking off in wild directions.  Happily, at least in this circumstance, the end result is close to what I set out to create.

San Francisco Pier 14 - Night Polar Panorama

 

How's it made?

For those of you interested in the workflow, here is the readers digest version. Source imagery was a couple hundred images taken with canon 5DM2 and Gigapan epic pro.  I bracketed thinking I needed a HDR but it turned out the +2 shots had enough range for me so I dumped the other exposures.  I used Gigapan Stitch to compile the panorama.  If your interested in panorama software I am currently using both Autopano Giga and Gigapan stitch.  I don't know which is better---or maybe which is worse---they both crash a lot.

Anyway, once the gigapixel panorama was exported into Photoshop I used a plugin filter by Flaming Pear called Flexify 2.  My photoshop cried out-of-memory trying to process gigapixel images into polar projection so I ended up breaking the panorama into pieces, distorting them to polar, and then putting the pieces back together.  A few touch ups to the stitch alignments and some color correction and she was all done.

I really liked the end result but Aub felt that the original panorama (before it was distorted to polar) was just as good, if not better.  I have included the original gigapixel image below.  You be the judge.

San Francisco Pier 14 - Original Panorama

Our first 360 Virtual Tour - Kendall Jackson Wine Center

Kendall Jackson Wine CenterOrigins

So we got the gigapan epic pro and I've started thinking about 360 panoramas.  I've seen them online since the early 2000's but they always seemed clunky (usually quicktime applets.)  I wanted to see if anyone has come up with a better way to show this kind of thing on a website and indeed they have!

Here is my first attempt: 360 Virtual tour of Kendall Jackson Wine Center.  The tasting room manager at KJ was kind enough to permit me to setup and photograph just before they opened for the day.  The whole process took about 30 min.  Visitors were starting to come in by the end so you can see a couple bodies at the tasting bar cut it half!  Still, despite the half people, and a few mis-alignments, I think its a fantastic example of whats possible.

New Photography Service

Based on the success of this demo I am thinking 360 virtual tours would be a great addition to the photography services Lorem Photo offers.  I'm thinking these are a great way to convey a sense of a place.  They could be used to help sell high end real estate, put on winery websites (KJ?), maybe even golf courses?

So if you or anyone you know might be interested in this sort of think let me know.  I've posted two examples and pricing here.

First Gigapixel Landscape

Taking the image

Out the door before the sun comes up.  Car loaded up with a bunch of equipment.  I set out into the beautiful hills of Sonoma County.  I come back with my first gigapixel landscape.
Petaluma Hills - Untitled 1 (Click to view hi-res)
Epic Pro + 5DMII on tripod = Awsomeness

New Equipment

After a year of planning and scheming ways to get the equipment I finally got the last piece I needed.  It arrived with summer the first week of July and I could not be geeking out harder.

The Giga Pan Epic Pro is a robotic tripod mount that allows you to take hundreds of photographs from a single vantage point and stitch them together into one, 10+ gigapixel photograph.  Whats 10+ gigapixels?  About 1000x better resolution than a typical camera.
Me with my babyGlamor shot of the GigaPan Epic Pro

Combine the giga pan with a bunch of gear I've put together over the past year (5D Mark II w/ 24 MP Sensor, AutoPano Giga, Photoshop CS5, heavy weight tripod, Designjet 42" Printer) and I'm a lean, mean, 4 foot by 8 foot, ultra-high resolution landscape printing machine.

Lorem Photo + Kishlery = better image portfolio

New Galleries

Our image presentation is now better than ever. Checkout the new Lorem Photo Image Galleries here. All of our classic images are there plus some new stuff.  I particularly like Aubrie's recent abstracts.

Behind-the-Scenes?

For those of you interested in the behind the scenes, the galleries are based on a fantastic JavaScript gallery called Kishlery. Each galley embeded on the site hooks into our flickr account and grabs the pics by tag. It's awsome cause we just upgraded to lighteoom 3 which integrates with flickr. So now publishing our imgaes to flikr, our website, and facebook is one click in lighteoom. Ah...the satisfaction of a simplified workflow!

Could it be better?

One thing the current method for displaying images can't do is allow linking to single images.  I'd love to be able to easily generate links to single images in the gallery that I could share.  If anyone has a good idea on how I might do this don't be shy.  Also nice would be a fullscreen mode.