Goosenecks of the San Juan
The Goosenecks of the San Juan River in southeast Utah is an amazing location that's very difficult to do justice with a photograph. Here, the San Juan River meanders 1000 ft. below in a series of horseshoe shaped loops. I wanted to capture a stitched panorama of this scene just before sunrise in order to avoid the direct light which renders it a contrast nightmare. In actuality, this was shot just as the sun was breaking the horizon which added a small amount of direct light to the scene. I liked how this dim side lighting gave it a little more depth and color.
The stitching of this image was quite problematic as parallax distortion in the foreground forced me to crop out more than I wanted to. Parallax distortion occurs when the camera is not rotated around the optical center of the lens when shooting the images to be combined later. This optical center is referred to as the nodal point and there are specialized panoramic tripod heads you can buy to set this up properly. However, this equipment is quite pricey so I just wing it and try not to include much in the way of foreground whenever I shoot panos. However, in this case, that was unavoidable.
To read more about my spring trip to the desert, check out my blog.
This really needs to be viewed large: View on Black
To purchase prints or view my full image collection, check out my Explore The Light Photography website.
Goosenecks of the San Juan
The Goosenecks of the San Juan River in southeast Utah is an amazing location that's very difficult to do justice with a photograph. Here, the San Juan River meanders 1000 ft. below in a series of horseshoe shaped loops. I wanted to capture a stitched panorama of this scene just before sunrise in order to avoid the direct light which renders it a contrast nightmare. In actuality, this was shot just as the sun was breaking the horizon which added a small amount of direct light to the scene. I liked how this dim side lighting gave it a little more depth and color.
The stitching of this image was quite problematic as parallax distortion in the foreground forced me to crop out more than I wanted to. Parallax distortion occurs when the camera is not rotated around the optical center of the lens when shooting the images to be combined later. This optical center is referred to as the nodal point and there are specialized panoramic tripod heads you can buy to set this up properly. However, this equipment is quite pricey so I just wing it and try not to include much in the way of foreground whenever I shoot panos. However, in this case, that was unavoidable.
To read more about my spring trip to the desert, check out my blog.
This really needs to be viewed large: View on Black
To purchase prints or view my full image collection, check out my Explore The Light Photography website.