Rooftop and Restless: Dallas, Texas

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I had the opportunity to do some photography atop a hotel I was staying in while in Texas for a conference, so I brought my panorama mindset with me and managed to grab this 11 shot panorama of the Dallas skyline. I have many versions of this scene, and you may be wondering why I chose such a vast view, but I wanted to include Dealey Plaza, the location where JFK was assassinated. You can see the whole area in the lower left.

 

The wind was quite gusty, so I made sure to lock down the tripod head with each shot. Since I was traveling, I took my smaller tripod, which doesn't have a single-axis-rotation option. This made for a larger degree of human error, thus the 11-shot panorama instead of an even number. I allowed for a greater amount of overlap than I would normally give, since my shots were eyeballed instead of rotating on a specific axis. I also had to reshoot a couple of the images after gusts of wind knocked the camera during exposures. I chose a higher ISO to shorten my shots to accomodate for the possible camera-shake blur due to wind.

 

Shooting a scene like this is challenging, and the effectiveness can depend on just the right balance of sky illumination, city lights, and sharpness. This panorama is nearly 5ft wide shot (at 300dpi), and provides for a good amount of sharp details. I shot panoramas for about 2hrs with a friend (a maintenance engineer also accompanied us). What a great evening...

 

 

 

Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 24-105L @60mm

11 vertical exposures stitched together (5 top, 6 bottom)

8 seconds (each exposure) @ F16

RRS pano bar

ISO 400

Done