Definition

Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. An image showing a field of view approximating, or greater than, that of the human eye – about 160° by 75°. This generally means it has an aspect ratio of 2:1 or larger, the image being at least twice as wide as it is high.

Image stitching

Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image.

Image stitching algorithms create the high resolution photo-mosaics used to produce today’s digital maps and satellite photos. They also come bundled with most digital cameras currently being sold, and can be used to create beautiful ultra wide-angle panoramas.

Other major issues to deal with are the presence of parallax, lens distortion, scene motion, and exposure differences. In a non-ideal real-life case, the intensity varies across the whole scene, and so does the contrast and intensity across frames.

Joiner photos

Joiner photography is a photographic technique wherein multiple pictures are assembled into one. There are two types of joiner photography, photographic collages and Polaroid collages.

You stand in one place and take photos all around you. With a ‘panorama’ you simply swivel and take from left to right or vice versa. To record a greater field of vision you work both up and down and across.

David Hockney

David Hockney, a seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, revolutionised visual art with his inventive technique of creating joiners. This method, which involves piecing together a mosaic of photographs to form a cohesive image, challenges and transcends traditional perspectives in both photography and painting.

By fragmenting and then reassembling the visual field, Hockney’s joiners disrupt conventional viewpoints, inviting a deeper exploration into the intricacies of perception and representation. This introduction sets the stage to dive into the impact of Hockney’s joiners, underscoring their significance in reshaping contemporary art and photography, and illuminating their influence on artists and photographers alike.

Image analysis

David Hockney’s ‘Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April 1986, #2’ is a photographic collage that chronicles his road trip on a California highway, CA 138. The artwork is composed of 750 color photographs, offering both the driver’s and passenger’s perspective of their journey.

The image reveals a seemingly mundane scene of a highway with desert vegetation but in Hockney’s interpretation becomes an exciting and vibrant artistic creation. His decision to use hundreds of photos offers the viewer multiple viewpoints by disrupting traditional camera angles; this creates an unusual experience for viewers accustomed to seeing only one fixed angle.

David Hockney described the circumstances leading to the creation of this photo collage of the scenic Pearblossom Highway north of Los Angeles. His detailed collage reveals the more mundane observations of a road trip. The littered cans and bottles and the meandering line where the pavement ends and the sand begins point to the interruption of the desert landscape by the roads cutting through it and the imprint of careless travelers.

“Pearblossom Highway shows a crossroads in a very wide open space, which you only get a sense of in the western United States. . . . [The] picture was not just about a crossroads, but about us driving around. I’d had three days of driving and being the passenger. The driver and the passenger see the road in different ways. When you drive you read all the road signs, but when you’re the passenger, you don’t, you can decide to look where you want. And the picture dealt with that: on the right-hand side of the road it’s as if you’re the driver, reading traffic signs to tell you what to do and so on, and on the left-hand side it’s as if you’re a passenger going along the road more slowly, looking all around. So the picture is about driving without the car being in it.”

What is it?

Exposure bracketing allows you to take 3 images at 3 different exposures which gives you the security of knowing that one of them will have captured the light in the best possible way.

It allows you to capture every detail in a scene. It helps you avoid overexposing or underexposing your photos. It gives you more options to choose from when you’re editing.

AEB

Many digital cameras, as well as a few drones, include an Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) option. AEB is very useful for capturing high contrast scenes for HDR. When AEB is selected, the camera automatically takes three or more shots, each at a different exposure.

AEB is like having an automatic version of exposure compensation that gives you a number of variations to choose from.

What is exposure compensation?

Exposure compensation basically helps you override automatic exposure adjustments your camera makes in situations with uneven light distribution, filters, non-standard processing, or under exposure or overexposure. It lets you take control of your image’s brightness by manually increasing or decreasing exposure.

The formula is as follows: exposure time in fractions of a second >=(equals) shutter angle in degrees / (over) 360 degrees x (times, as in >multiply by) the frame rate.

What are HDR photos?

HDR describes a type of photo that captures a dynamic range that can’t be achieved in a single photograph.

HDR (high dynamic range) helps you get great shots in high-contrast situations. The iPhone camera takes several photos in rapid succession at different exposures and blends them together to bring more highlight and shadow detail to your photos.

Who is Ansel Adams?

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph.

Ansel Adams is one of the giants of 20th Century photography, esteemed for his lush gelatine silver photographs of the national parks that have become icons of the US wilderness. A passionate champion of photography as a legitimate form of fine art, he referred to his most stunning images as his “Mona Lisas”.

His childhood

Ansel Adams had problems fitting in at school. Some problems were due to a natural shyness and some were due to a physical issue (an “earthquake nose” as he called it – his nose was broken during an earthquake). It is also possible that he may have dealt with dyslexia.

Adams was a hyperactive and sickly child with few friends. Dismissed from several schools for bad behavior, he was educated by private tutors and members of his family from the age of 12. Adams taught himself the piano, which would become his early passion.

His Inspiration

When photographer Ansel Adams looked through his camera lens, he saw more than Yosemite’s rocks, trees, and rivers. He saw art. Hues of wildness surfaced in this great American photographer’s stunning black-and-white prints. And for most of his life, Yosemite National Park was Adams’ chief source of inspiration.

Ansel Adams photographed Yosemite primarily to raise environmental awareness. His iconic photographs of the Yosemite National Park played a pivotal role in advocating for the preservation of natural landscapes and the need for conservation efforts.

Sierra Club

In 1934, Adams was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, a role he maintained for 37 years. His tenure spanned the years that the Club evolved into a powerful national organization that lobbied to create national parks and protect the environment from destructive development projects.

The purposes of the Sierra Club are to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.

In 1927, Adams participated in the Club’s annual outing, known as the High Trip, and, the next year, he became the Club’s official trip photographer. In 1930 he became assistant manager of the outings which consisted of month-long excursions of up to 200 people.

What else was he involved in?

Ansel Adams was not just a photographer. After leaving school at the age of 12, he taught himself how to read music and play the piano. He was judged to be gifted and actually intended to make a career as a pianist before photography became his main occupation.

While photography and the piano shared his attention during his early adulthood, by about 1930 Adams decided to devote his life to photography. (As late as 1945, however, he still thought enough of his playing to have a recording made of his interpretations of Beethoven, Chopin, and perhaps others.)

When were his photos first used for environmental purposes?

Adams’s images were first used for environmental purposes when the Sierra Club was seeking the creation of a national park in the Kings River region of the Sierra Nevada. Adams lobbied Congress for a Kings Canyon National Park, the Club’s priority issue in the 1930s, and created an impressive, limited-edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, which influenced both Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and President Franklin Roosevelt to embrace the Kings Canyon Park idea. The park was created in 1940.

The Sierra Club advocated for making Kings Canyon a national park so it could be better protected, and Adams was chosen to represent the club at a conference in Washington. To make his argument, Adams presented a selection of his own photographs before the assembled representatives.

How did Ansel Adams help convincing the congress to protect the high sierra

Adams lobbied Congress for a Kings Canyon National Park, the Club’s priority issue in the 1930s, and created an impressive, limited-edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, which influenced both Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and President Franklin Roosevelt to embrace the Kings Canyon Park idea.

Visualisation

Visualisation is the concept of interpreting a scene and deciding on the final shot before pressing the shutter. Taking place within the ‘mind’s eye’, as Adams often said, visualisation involves intuitively assessing a subject and choosing the most important attributes to frame and highlight.

Zone system

The Zone System, pioneered by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer over 80 years ago, is a technique that offers photographers a way to control exposure and capture the entire tonal scale in their photographs.

Image Analysis

Technical:

By making his images black and white, he is able to enhance the dramatic shadows and manipulate reality. The lighting in the image made it so that the mountains were well lit up and the trees below had loads of shadows on them. To achieve this type of lighting, he waited for a break in the clouds. He used a fast shutter speed and he used tiny aperture holes.

Visual:

The colour of this image is in black and white, you can see the lighting reflect off the river. You can see the lines from the shadows of the trees coming down into the river and the texture of the mountains are really clear and in depth.

Contextual:

The image of ‘Cathedral Peak and Lake’, taken during the journey, perhaps best encapsulates the irony of the expedition. It’s a striking depiction of the danger and grandeur of the High Sierra, capturing the resolute Cathedral Peak and Lake standing proudly before a dark swell of gathering clouds.

Conceptual:

The story behind Ansel Adams’ “Cathedral Peak and Lake” brings us back to the long friendship formed between Ansel and renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Perhaps no two artists have had a greater impact on the cultural imagination of America’s wilderness. Though Ansel’s medium was photography while O’Keeffe’s was painting, both, in their own way, captured the style, emotion, and drama of exploring the landscapes of America. It’s no surprise that they were not only great admirers of each other’s artistic works, but close friends and frequent companions.

The image of “Cathedral Peak and Lake,” taken during the journey, perhaps best encapsulates the irony of the expedition. It’s a striking depiction of the danger and grandeur of the High Sierra, capturing the resolute Cathedral Peak standing proudly before a dark swell of gathering clouds. The dark shadows that fall across the top of the peak, barren of even the scrubby pines that dot the lower reaches of the mountain, convey the ruggedness of climbing it, apparent even from across the icy lake.

Romanticism

Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature, a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect, a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities.

Romanticism has long been associated within the landscape. In the medium of photography, the sense of romance of the landscape features it spirit in full bloom.

What was Romanticism a reaction against?

Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and also a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

Enlightenment

Romanticism, flourishing in the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, emphasised emotion, nature, and individualism, contrasting sharply with the Enlightenment’s focus on reason, science, and societal progress. The Enlightenment, spanning much of the 18th century, prioritised logic, scepticism, and intellectual discourse.

A fact-file about romanticism​

Who-

In English literature, the key figures of the Romantic movement are considered to be the group of poets including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the much older William Blake, followed later by the isolated figure of John Clare​

What-

Romanticism has long been associated within the landscape. In the medium of photography, the sense of romance of the landscape features it spirit in full bloom. It is very hard to categorise. The very nature of Romanticism is rather uncontrollable and unpredictable.​

How-

With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.​

Where, when-

Romanticism was first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800. It then went on to gain momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. ​

Why-

The main idea of Romanticism is the celebration of the individual and the glorification of nature. More specifically, Romantics embrace the uniqueness of the human spirit, which they feel is reflected in and deeply connected to the untamed wildness of nature.​

The Sublime

For Romantics, the sublime is a meeting of the subjective-internal (emotional) and the objective-external (natural world): we allow our emotions to overwhelm our rationality as we experience the wonder of creation.

In the “sublime”, vast horizons, towering mountains, and plunging chasms inspired profound feelings of awe, or even fear, rapture, and closeness to God or the infinite. The idealization of nature’s landscapes promoted a spiritual antidote to the crowded, industrialized urban areas where so many people lived.

According to Burke, the Beautiful is that which is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is that which has the power to compel and destroy us.

How did the Industrial Revolution have an impact on Romanticism?

The Industrial Revolution had a profound impact on the Romantic movement, shaping its themes, concerns, and artistic expressions. The loss of connection with nature, the alienating effects of urbanization, and the critique of industrial capitalism all influenced the works of Romantic poets and artists.

The rise of Romanticism can be seen as a literature’s backlash against the Industrial Revolution. Escaping from the crashing modernity and rise of technology, factories, and cities, Romantics focused on nature, rural life and subjectivity.

The importance of the British painters JMW Turner and John Constable​

The landscape painters Turner and Constable were influential exponents of romanticism, an artistic movement of the late 1700s to mid-1800s that emphasized an emotional response to nature. ​

Turner, who travelled extensively, often infused his dramatic seascapes and landscapes with literary or historical allusions. Two of Britain’s greatest painters, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable were also the greatest of rivals. ​

Born within a year of each other Turner in 1775, Constable in 1776 – they used landscape art to reflect the changing world around them.​

Key word and terms associated with romanticism

Individualism ​

Focus on the self and personal expression, valuing individual creativity over societal constraints. ​

Imagination ​

Emphasized as a powerful and transcendent faculty, often seen as more important than reason. ​

Nature ​

Nature was seen as a source of inspiration, beauty, and spiritual power, often depicted as sublime and untamed. ​

Sublime ​

A concept that refers to experiences of awe and terror in nature or art, where beauty and danger intersect. ​

Emotion ​

Emphasis on intense emotions such as passion, awe, melancholy, and longing, often in reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. ​

The Supernatural ​

Interest in the mystical, the mysterious, and the irrational, including folklore, myths, and gothic elements. ​

The Heroic ​

Celebration of the individual hero, often portrayed as a misunderstood or tragic figure. ​

Exoticism ​

Fascination with distant, mysterious lands and cultures, often portrayed in art, literature, and music. ​

Nostalgia ​

A longing for the past, especially for simpler or more primitive times, often idealized. ​

Rebellion ​

Rejection of established norms, authority, and traditional conventions, including a challenge to societal, political, and artistic constraints. ​

Art for Art’s Sake​

The idea that art should be valued for its intrinsic beauty and emotional power rather than its moral or didactic message. ​

Gothic ​

A style that blends the mysterious, eerie, and dark elements, often involving haunted landscapes or supernatural occurrences. ​

The Byronic Hero ​

A specific type of hero, derived from Lord Byron’s works, characterized by rebellion, isolation, and a troubled, tormented soul. ​

Sentimentality ​

Overwhelming emotion, often expressed in literature or visual arts, with a focus on tender, emotional moments. ​

Any expanse of natural scenery that can be seen from one viewpoint is also called a landscape. The artistic meaning of landscape is the earliest, dating from the 1600s.

When did landscape emerge as a genre in western culture? ​

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the tradition of depicting pure landscapes declined, and the landscape was seen only as a setting for religious and figural scenes. This tradition continued until the 16th century when artists began to view the landscape as a subject in its own right.

When did classical landscapes emerge as a genre?​

In the 17th century the classical landscape was born. These landscapes were influenced by classical antiquity and sought to illustrate an ideal landscape recalling Arcadia, a legendary place in ancient Greece known for its quiet pastoral beauty.

What prompted the rise of Landscape Art during the late 18th / 19th century?​

Subsequently, religious painting declined throughout the rest of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. That fact, combined with a new Romanticism — which emphasized emotion, individualism, and the glorification of nature — promoted landscapes to a prestigious place in art that continues to this day.

When did landscape photography originate?

According to records, the earliest known evidence of a landscape photograph was taken between the years of 1826 and 1827. It was an urban landscape photo taken by a French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niepce.

My Photoshoot: Contact sheet

I decided to use lightroom to present all of my images, I have used filters to flag all the images i wish to edit or have already edited.

Experimenting with editing (before and after)

To edit my images, I decided to use lightroom as it has the options to change my images into HDR photos (high dynamic range). All of my photos were taken either at Plemont beach, Gorey and St Ouens, and were all taken either at sunrise or sunset to capture a more dramatic sky and lighting. I experimented with different shutter speeds, ISO, and exposures to capture the best images I could and to see what settings would make my images look the best. On a few of the images, the exposure is too low which made them quite dark, considering the scene was already quite dark at the time, so I had to increase the highlights and shadows in my editing to make sure I get all the details I can. I tried to use exposure bracketing on a couple of my images so that I could merge the 3 different exposures together to allow for more dynamic range and achieve a balanced exposure in all areas of the photo. Since I did not have a tripod, quite a few of my images were not in focus, but I was able to fix that by increasing the texture and making the foreground look a bit more unblurred. In future, I will ensure that I use a tripod or surface to steady my camera and compensate for the longer shutter speed.

With the three photos above, I decided to make them look more dramatic by putting them in black and white, I lowered the exposure and increased the contrast. I used two different setting on the tone of my image, with the shadows and highlights depending on how the image was in the first place and i ended up adding a vignette to add more depth.

For these three, i decided to make them a bit brighter but also still dramaticise them. I increased the vibrance and saturation of the images and the shadows and whites. I decreased the highlights and blacks. I also decreased the vignette of the image to make it look more dramatic.

Final images

Set 1

Presentation

The photos I have chosen to be my final ones, create a storyline. They represent freedom and how the subject is finding and accepting her identity. Each photo has a shadow, which almost looks like a soul, leaving the subjects body, and as you go down the photos, the soul becomes further and further away from her body. This symbolises the subject letting go and accepting who she is.

Virtual Gallery

If these photos were to be put in a gallery, I would want to present them as either one of the virtual images below.

Final Photos

In this image, you can see how the subject is holding her arm up, almost shielding herself. This shows how she doesn’t want to accept her identity and wants it to stop.

Here you can tell how the subject is slowly giving in and letting herself go.

This image represents ‘question of self’ as she is facing herself, almost questioning herself and what her identity is, but also accepting it.

Set 2

In this final piece, These photos show the subject’s identity as a dancer. The facial expressions in the images show how happy she feels when dancing. The double exposure images shows how the subject moves and captures her dancing more.

Virtual Gallery

This is how I would want my photos presented if they were to be put in a gallery.

Final Photos

These images give an angelic effect to the subject’s identity. The double exposure shows the movements and emotion being put into the images.

Evaluation

How successful was your final outcome?

I would say that my final outcome was successful, although i could have done better and taken some more photos in various different areas with different angles of the subject. I think I did well with what I had. I got a story across to the viewers and I believe my images represent that story and ‘finding your identity’ quite well.

I intended to capture the subject’s emotions and movements using a slow shutter speed and a long exposure from the beginning, what I did not intend to do is create a storyline from it. I was halfway through editing before I had realised that these images would work really well together and that’s when I decided to create the storyline.

I did make a few references to Francesca Woodman‘s technical aspect of her images as I used a long exposure but I used the flash and I relied on a high contrast to make my images look interesting which she did not.

Francesca Woodman’s images were all in black and white, whereas mine are in colour, although, the form and the pattern of both of our images are quite alike.

Some of Francesca’s photos represented ‘isolation’ and ‘questions of self’ which my images can represent as well, because mine indicate letting go of past self and accepting who you are.

I think, if i had the chance, I would change the outfits to something a bit more flowy to get more dimension in the images and really capture the slow shutter speed that I used. I would also change the setting of the images to somewhere more open and outside with nature. A different setting would allow the subject to express herself more as the studio didn’t have enough room for that.

Process of Editing

First, I cropped the photo to square, and then I selected what I wanted to remove from the photo and selected ‘generative fill’ which then edited it into just a hand without holding anything.

I then duplicated the layer, in case I made any mistakes, and I adjusted the brightness and contrast.

I then duplicated the layer, in case I made any mistakes, and I adjusted the brightness and contrast.

After that, I modified my exposure and gamma correction.

Then I decided to change the vibrance of the image.

I then moved on to switching up the hue of the image, just slightly, to give the photo some dimension.

The three images were all edited the same way so that I could guarantee that they work well and look good together.

The femininity images had the same concept to editing except different settings.

I cropped it to square and modified the brightness and contrast, increasing both of them to brighten up the image.

I then moved on to adjusting the exposure which I reduced, and the gamma correction which I increased. This gave a more eerie effect to the image, while still keeping the pink tint.

I then increased the saturation which brought back more of the pink colour that I lost when doing the gamma correction and exposure.

I started off with this photo.

I then decided to add on another image on the top and blend them together by reducing the opacity on the top layer.

pped the image to get rid of negative space and so that it is square. I also flattened the image to make it all one layer.

After that, I adjusted the brightness and contrast to make it a little darker as it was too light.

I decreased the exposure and increased the gamma correction to improve the quality of my image and also give it an angelic effect.

I modified the vibrance by increasing both the vibrance and saturation to give it a little tint.

I then adjusted the curves to adjust the contrast and the lighting of my image.

Before and After Editing

With these images, I brought up the brightness and contrast, exposure, vibrance and the gamma correction to create this soul effect. I reduced the hue only slightly to make the image look more like fire. I cropped it into a square with the subject in the middle of the image.

In this set of images, I went for the theme of femininity. I increased the brightness, contrast, gamma correction, vibrance and the saturation. I reduced the vibrance saturation, and the exposure. I cropped two of them to squares and one of them to get rid of negative space throughout the image.

With these images, I increased the brightness, contrast, vibrance, saturation and gamma correction and reduced the hue saturation slightly.

Presentation

This is how I would want my final photos to be presented.

In my photoshoot, I started off with 102 photos, using black or white backgrounds and a slow shutter speed. Most of these photos are 1/2 body photos or 1/4 body photos. I then took another 215 photos using a black background but with pink studio lighting, still using a slow shutter speed. I ended up with 317 photos in my contact sheet.

I then narrowed it down to 19 photos by flagging them, which will be the photos I use for my editing and some possibly for my final photos.

Unedited Photos

Francesca Woodman

Who is she?

Francesca Stern Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred, merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured.

Francesca Woodman is best known for photographing herself. But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence.

Meaning behind her photos

Francesca Woodman’s entire body of work was produced as a young person and created over just eight short years. Her photographs explore many themes that affect young people such as relationships, sexuality, questions of self, body image, alienation, isolation and confusion or ambiguity about personal identity.

Francesca Woodman photographed herself, often nude, in empty interiors. But her pictures are not traditional self-portraits. She is usually half hidden by objects or furniture or appears as a blur. The images convey an underlying sense of human fragility.

Why did Francesca Woodman take her photos?

Woodman knew that not showing a clear subject could be more impactful that showing it. Her photos, which already have an abstract quality due to the black and white film, present the viewer with something to interpret rather than just observe.

What was Francesca Woodman’s photography style?

Woodman applied some of the characteristics associated with surrealism to her own work. She created dreamlike environments with interesting and unusual objects, such as shells and eels, and combined familiar things in unfamiliar contexts to evoke uncanny feelings.

What is the power of identity in photography?

Defining your photographic identity will allow you to say who you are, what you want to be, and how you are to be perceived by others. This should be apparent to each viewer, regardless of whether they are a photographer or not. Your photographic identity will define how you will be perceived by the world around you.

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