This panorama was pieced together from four photographs

A panorama (adj. panoramic) is an ultra-wide photograph that is (normally) pieced together from multiple images. They provide a unique way to view scenery, landscapes or anything that’s really, really wide…

How To Take A Panorama

First off, to take a really good panorama you must use a tripod. Although a lot of compact cameras come with easy-to-use panorama functions, they’re rubbish compared to doing things the proper way. You’ve got to use a tripod to achieve the same angle all the way through the image (as much as is possible).

Set your camera to manual and try and get the settings to suit the entire subject for your panorama. You mustn’t change the settings at all for the entirety of the panorama, otherwise you’ll end up with each segment not matching the rest. What you could do is adjust your camera’s exposure etc. against the middle of your viewpoint and then move it from left to right, ensuring that the exposure meter doesn’t go too high or low from the optimum exposure.

Once you’re ready, take as many photos as are necessary and overlap each by about 20%. This will allow your computer software to accurately piece together the panorama.

Piecing Together The Panorama

When you first put together your images, the panorama often comes out bent

Although there are some dedicated software solutions for making panoramas, I highly recommend using Adobe Photoshop for the job. I won’t go into the details of how it’s done (right now), but I will mention that panoramas often come out bent (as above) due to it being almost impossible to get the vertical angle at 0 degrees, unless you have accurate levels.

Photoshop’s warp tool is excellent at correcting this problem. I might do an extension of this post at a later date that will go into the details of the procedure.

Click for larger previews:

At last, after an appalling 58 days or so of delay, here is my first of many posts on my trip to Sweden with my good friend and fellow photographer Ollie Malpass.

I’m not going to write too much about the photos in this particular post; I’m up at a rather unusual hour today, so I’m not thinking straight enough for terribly eloquent writing.

For now, feast your eyes on these photos and please do comment!

Click on any photo to view a larger preview

28mm, f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/250 sec

28mm, f/2.8, ISO 100, 8 seconds

28mm, f/9.0, ISO 100, 10 seconds

28mm, f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/40 sec

28mm, f/8.0, ISO 100, 4 seconds

28mm, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/1250 sec

View the rest of the set (which will be added to over the next few days) on Flickr.

Part 2 coming soon…

Those of you who check back occasionally will have noticed that I’ve been away for a while. Unfortunately, I haven’t done anything particularly exciting since I returned from Singapore, but I’ve been having a great time nonetheless.

The highlight of my month has been getting my A-level exam results. I was delighted to find that I’d got two A grades in Economics and English and a B grade in Biology, leaving me with ‘AABB‘ (the extra B being from Geography last year). Although two As and two Bs is fairly mediocre by the standards of Winchester College, I’m just elated that I’ll be going to the University of Warwick in October to study Biomedical Science.

Now I can watch House and feel like I’ll be doing a similar job one day, although with less drama, no walking stick and not as much sarcasm.

I wasn’t feeling in the mood to go to Winchester and celebrate with a pub-crawl, but on Friday my friends Alex and Patrick (left to right below) came round for a few drinks. Note Patrick’s style with the full-to-the-brim wine glass.

28mm, f/5.0, ISO 800, 1/10 sec

We also witnessed the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in GTA 4 (view the image’s photo page for a description):

28mm, f/5.0, ISO 800, 1/60 sec

Recently when I was watching Blow (starring Johnny Depp) with another friend, Sam, the spider pictured below ran out from under the sofa and interrupted the showing. It paid a sorry price indeed. It managed to take 5 sprays of Raid insecticide before finally giving up.

28mm, f/5.0, ISO 800, 1/100 sec

I’m going to Jersey tonight to spend a few days there (photos are a given). Next month I’m finally going on the epic trip to Sweden with my friend and co-photographer Ollie Malpass. I’m incredibly excited about the photography we’ll be doing there. Guaranteed to be more interesting than peaches and spiders.

28mm, F/2.8, ISO 1600, 1/15 sec

At last, here is the third and final part to the Singapore Botanic Gardens post. Click any of the photos to see a larger preview on Flickr.

New to Flickr? Each Flickr photo has a link that reads “Back to the Flickr photo page”, which will allow you to read a description of the photo.

A sunbird enjoys a tasty meal of nectar.

250mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/400 sec

I am absolutely clueless when it comes to identifying birds, insects or any other animal that’s not pretty much ubiquitous. I identified these birds as Sunbirds, thanks to a little help from my old Geography teacher.

250mm, f/7.1, ISO 1600, 1/500

179mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/320

28mm, f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/320 sec

28mm, f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/1000 sec

View the Singapore Botanic Gardens Set (at the time of posting, not all the photos have been fully tagged and given descriptions)

Related Posts:

• Singapore Botanic Gardens Part 1
• Singapore Botanic Gardens Part 2

79mm, f/4.5, ISO 1600, 1/200 sec

OK, here we go again. Another big batch of photos from Singapore Zoo for your viewing pleasure. I’m also going to throw in a little more more information about the place and what makes it so special.

163mm, f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/500 sec

Singapore Zoo opened on 23rd June 1973 and was the result of a S$9 million project that was funded by the Singapore government. The Zoo currently has the largest colony of captive orangutans in the world.

171mm, f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/320 sec

From the start the zoo has always been run with the premise that open-enclosures and naturalistic environments would be used to hold its animals. Not only does this theme allow for more comfortable habitats for the animals, it also allows the visitors to be closer to the animals and often literally get more of a feel for them.

250mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/320 sec

The Zoo also runs a ‘Night Safari‘ attraction next to the main zoo grounds. Although I didn’t get a chance to go on that, it’s on my To-Do list for my next trip to Singapore.

171mm, f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/500 sec

To view the rest of the set, click here. More photos are being added to the set all the time.

Back to Part 1

On to Part 3

Tags: Singapore Zoo, Singapore, Animals, Tiger, Photography, Entertainment

I decided that, although fun, there’s no point in trying to make a viable homepage for people; who can challenge iGoogle (or even just the standard Google page)? I certainly can’t, especially with Feedzilla’s appallingly slow loading times during peak hours.

I also thought that I shouldn’t throw to waste all the time and effort I’d put in setting up the Disqus commenting system, Google Custom Search (which still needs a little tweaking) and so on. I’ve kept the lovely animated Flash clock from the companion site experiment, however. I really like that.

So, no more messing around with changing plans. It’s now final that Exposure Closure will be moving, although I haven’t made a firm deadline yet. I’m hoping to have it done by October, however, which is when I should be going to university.

I also promise you that in the next few days there will be plenty of new, interesting posts, mostly to do with my photography, but also on tasty topics from the technology world.

Tags: Photography, Technology, Software, Internet, Blogging, Design

Meanwhile, the Companion site is pretty much complete, although it being in ‘beta’ means that changes will be happening at any point. Refinements include:

• Google Search results now open in the same window by default, much like they do in the regular Google result pages.
• Colour scheme has been finalised. It’s designed to be easy on the eyes and to go fairly well with Mac OS X’s grey user interface.
• The header will change regularly and feature some of my best photos.
• The Google Search text field is meant to focus upon page load, although I’ve noted that it doesn’t seem to be working in Firefox. I recommend using Apple’s Safari 4 or Google Chrome, however. These are WebKit-based browsers that offer the most consistent and accurate rendering of websites around the Web. They also happen to be the fastest browsers on their respective platforms (until Chrome is released for Mac OS, perhaps).
• Three news feeds, provided by Feedzilla, cover the most common areas of Internet news: world news, technology news and entertainment news. Unfortunately they seem to slow down or disable during Feedzilla’s peak usage, but there’s little I can do about that.
• Animated Flash Clock shows the correct time based on your computer’s time zone settings.

I am currently in the process of streamlining the HTML code; there’s quite a bit of redundant code in there that might be slowing the page load slightly.

All of this means that the current blog won’t be moving, although if I can design a good enough replacement in the coming months, the companion site will be integrated with the blog somehow.

Try out the new Exposure Closure Companion site. It’s designed to be a half-decent home page with integrated Google Search (which has the option to search this website), a feed of the latest technology, world news and entertainment articles from around the world as well as a widget showing the latest posts from this blog.

I know it’s not the kind of home page that would suit everyone, but send me ideas for features and I’ll try and make it more appealing to the masses. Leave a comment on this post with thoughts.

The animals are given beautifully landscaped open enclosures with loads of room to roam, separated from the public by as little as possible (moats, for example, or toughened glass in the case of lions).

If you’re ever in Singapore, the zoo is a must. It certainly beats the zoos I’ve seen back in England. Click either image to view the full set. More to follow shortly, along with full descriptions.

84mm, f/4.5, ISO 800, 1/1000 sec

179mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/640 sec

On to Part 2

Skip to Part 3