Shooting Challenge: 14 Eye-Popping Panoramas

Seventeen of you participated in this week’s shooting challenge, but three of you broke the rules and didn’t make the cut. Fortunately, the 14 stitched-up, wide angle shots that did make it through are pretty amazing.

If you submitted a shot but don’t see it here, please read the rules and try again next time!

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Benji Zorella

Camera: iPhone 4
App used: Panoramatic360

I know the quality of the photo isn’t the best, and it’s a bit grainy because it got a bit dark, but seeing this sunset was particularly amazing as I shared it with two of my best friends in the world after spending a perfect day in the park (slightly incapacitated). We were sitting in their back patio area watching some Arj Barker standup on my MacBook and I turned around and noticed the whole sky had turned bright blue with these red clouds surrounding everything while the sun was starting to settle into this gold tinge, so we hurriedly scrambled to the roof and watched as only a portion of the sky fell to night before the rest ended up giving way to one of the starriest skies I’ve ever seen. It took the sun about an hour and a half to fully set from the point that we got on the roof and it was hands down one of the best days and sunsets of my life.

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James McDonnell

Pentax K-x
Kit 18-55mm 3.5-5.6
Shot @ F13 for 1/250 of a sec
ISO200
AWB with slight Cold Bias Setting Override
Modified with Photoshop CS5

Joby Gorilla Pod for sweep
Hoya HD UV Filter
Flower Hood On

This is a panorama of the beautiful view from The Sunrise Resort in Cat Ba, Vietnam. Even in the winter, this resort provides good views and shows the stunning scenery of this beautiful part of the country.

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Pramod Sahye

This picture was taken using a Kodak V1073 which is a 10MP camera. Got this a few years ago. Well, I am from Mauritius and the photo I have attached was actually taken in Mauritius on my last trip which was last month. My mum is in the picture. She is what I will call a paparazzi 🙂 as she keep on taking my picture when I am back home after a year or two.

Well the picture was taken taken on a fairly sunny day (sorry I do not know the technicality that the picture should be describe. Took the picture using the panorama option in three shots.

The second picture was also taken in Mauritius at a holy lake in the centre of the island. It was taken with the same camera as mentioned above. It was a clear day and it took the panorama in two shots.

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Janro van Aswegen

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55 IS
F-stop: f/5
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 27mm

I took this Panorama while at a friend’s 18th birthday party. We were at Ledge Point about an hour north of Perth and we camped that night between the sand dunes outside of town. It was mostly a cloudless day but fire north of Perth filled the air with smoke. The smoke moved across the sky towards the sun creating a spectacular sunset. Some of my friends are in the foreground in a group talking hardly paying attention to the sunset.

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Arijeet Pal

Camera : Canon EOS 500D
Lens: Canon EFS 18-55 IS Lens
ISO : 100

Photographer: Arijeet Pal (17 years old, Bunbury Western Australia).

I just got my camera recently and was dying to get out there and try out my new tripod with some panoramic photos… This photo is one of my very first panoramas.
This photo captures the Bunbury township (Bunbury, western australia) from the well known ‘Bunbury look out’.

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Marcus Cher

Thinking of all the places to take a panorama, it is hard to pass up Webb Bridge designed by the iconic Melbourne architects Denton Corker Marshal. I was lucky to get the shots before it started bucketing down.

Camera Canon 7d
Compiled in Adobe Photoshop
Segment 9 photos
ISO 100
F22
Shutter 1/25

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Bernard Gray

Equipment:
Nikon D40
35mm f/1.8G

Settings:
~1/30s
~f/10
ISO800

Technique:
Handheld, portrait mode, ~30 shots in a 180 degree arc
Stitched in hugin, cropped and tweaked in digikam/gimp.

Story:
It’s an ~8800 sq m warehouse my company has just purchased, was empty and imposing (~3 times the size of the previous site) and I thought it would be a good place to learn how to shoot a pano 🙂

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Phil Burnham

I hope this counts..

I didn’t stitch it together, you just can’t stitch waves, but instead I used an UWA lens and cropped the top & bottom. I like to call it initiative 🙂

It was taken way to early for my liking today (Saturday 19th @ 06:30) at Curl Curl beach in NSW. I used a Canon 1D MkIV with a EF 18-35mm L USM f/2.8 closed down to f/11. Shot at ISO 100, 1/30sec on a weathered carbon fibre tripod. If you look really closely you can see that I’ve managed to silhouette a spear fisherman against the sun. Nice.

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Nico Liengme

Been meaning to submit to one of these challenges for ages, and having just moved to sunny QLD I made the most of the opportunity. This shot is made up of 10 exposures I took while inspecting an open house for sale in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast. The balcony was massive with a roughly 240 degree field of view.

All the shots were taken on a Canon 1000D, on a stock EF-S 18-55mm lens at 18mm with a Fotar polarizer, 1/125 sec at f/5.6 at ISO100. Probably should’ve bumped my shutter speed up up a stop as there’s a touch of motion blur in a couple of the frames from panning across the scene – but that probably won’t be very visible in this small reproduction.

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Marc Abbott

Equipment – Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT10
My photo is from the top of Whistler Peak in Whistler Canada. It shows this 20ft tall Inukshuk, a local stone statue on top of this snow covered peak. i end up at the top of this mountain at least once a week and am always blown away by the views from the top and thought it would be a great thing to share. There aren’t to many blue sky days as you would hope, its normally quite overcast at the top.
I used a program called autopano pro for mac to stitch the image together, its a quick and easy to use bit of software.

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Shane Nash

Camera: Sony A350
Lens: Minolta 28mm F2.8 Prime
Settings: Full Manual (1/50, f4.5, ISO200, manual focus)
Software: Stitched with Hugin and tweaked a little with Aperture.

This is Kununurra. The Saturation has not been touched the town is that green and red. The horizon has rain from Cyclone Carlos that headed west from Darwin. The town site is on left and Lake Kununurra or the Ord River to the top left. The bountiful agricultural land fed by irrigation water from the Massive Lake Argyle flows right and the one of the town Aboriginal communities is to the right of the shot.

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Natalia Watanabe

This is the view from our balcony at Rhodes. We are moving out pursuing our dreams and this is probably one of the things we are going to miss most. Unfortunately soon nobody will enjoy this awesome sunset as there is a new building rising. Also this is the first panorama I have created since I moved to Australia almost two years ago and I used Hugin to put it together.
My camera is a Canon PowerShot A710 IS with default settings (f/2.8, 1/8 sec exposure time, focal length 6mm, no flash)

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Jonathan Ward

Here is my photo for this week!

Taken with an Olympus E-500 40-150mm f/3.5-4.5 ISO100 1/160
stitched in arcsoft panorama maker 4 and contrast etc adjusted in picasa

I decided to go for a panorama i wouldn’t usually take. Most of my panoramas take in a huge expanse of land. This one has a deliberately smaller field of view, and challenged me to be a bit more deliberate in my composition, rather than letting some expanse just be absorbed into my camera. This is part of the kuringai national park, and i found this crooked tree to stick out like a sore thumb compared to the mostly upright trees in this bush. I like the sense of infinity you get looking into the distance, and the contrast between the green shoots and burnt trunks.

perhaps not the most exciting photo, considering Sydney’s amazing vistas, but definitely a photo that challenged me to appreciate the landscape around me.

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Wade Muller

Hi guys here’s my submission for the challenge. Apologies for the smaller size. I am between PCs and this came off my flickr.
I use a canon 550d with a 18-135mm lens.
I work very close to the bridge and its often that I even forget its there. So its nice once in a while to look at whats right in front of us. I have been a amateur photographer for a little while but love the way it pushes me to explore things I never would.
The photo is taken from the left pylon on the city side.


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