Post your vertical stitched photos
- Thread starter nikonpup
- Start date
Blue439
New member
I do not do a lot of vertical panoramas, as most of my subjects tend to spread along the horizontal instead (that applies to most landscapes as well). I have tried the so-called “Brenizer effect” (Ryan Brenizer is a good friend, wedding photographer in New York) which consists in using a longer lens (say, an 85mm) to shoot small portions of your scene in an adjacent manner (because the lens’s field of view is too narrow to cover more) at a wide aperture and then stitching all of those partial shots into one. Because of the telephoto look and feel and the very shallow depth of field, you can obtain amazing results that look like a wide-angle lens was used, but one that looked like a telephoto and produced a gorgeous blurred background...
In spite of their scarcity in my portfolio, I have managed to locate four vertical panoramas which, not surprisingly, all show old stones... All of them have been created for the same reason, i.e., lack of space to step back to include the whole scene in just one frame.
This first one shows the scriptorium in the Cistercian Abbey of Sénanque in Provence (France). The Cistercians are of course not known for the quality of the decoration in their churches (there is almost none), but are known for the quality of their appareling, i.e., the way stones are adjusted and joined together almost without mortar. So, I wanted to show the elegant curvature of the rib vaulting in that room, as well as the whole of the central supporting column, which is very famous among Mediævalists for its elegance and its... well, decoration, which as we have said is quite unusual for a Cistercian monastery. The tripod was up against the back wall, therefore I had no other option than stitch two exposure together, which was done in Photoshop.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.
The next photo shows the façade of the humble (and yet, not so humble) Benedictine priory church of Veyrines, an isolated village high in the mountains of Ardèche (southeastern France) and one of those truly out-of-the-way historical and architectural jewels that I so love to discover. Because the church is surrounded by village houses (maybe a dozen, tops), the street in front of it was too narrow to step back. The three-exposure panorama was stitched in PTGui. A lot o’ tweaking had to be done there and in Photoshop as the space is so narrow in front of that façade. I don’t believe any full-frontal photograph of the façade exists that fully respects the verticals, except this one. All the others were taken from the sides, and they exhibit horribly converging verticals. The corners of the gable wall look like they’re slightly converging, but that’s because they are in reality: with the passing of centuries, walls may tend to cave in, unless they have to support the weight of a vault (which they don’t in this case, as this church is simply timber-roofed), in which case they often tend to lean outwards under that weight. The central archvolts and columns around the portal are straight because they support no weight but their own, as they’re in the center. The church was built during the 11th century.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.
The next photograph takes us to a small village of the French Alps, not too far from the large city of Grenoble. This village is very special for Mediævalists because it boasts not just one Romanesque church, but two: the parish one, of which the choir and apse are shown below, and another which is a remnant of a hospital house for pilgrims built and managed by the Knights Templar. The parish one, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was built shortly after Year 1000 and shows very nice masonry and decoration work, for such a small village church built without much financial means. It also features a lovely crooked and stubby bell tower which is famous in the whole region, but I will not show it as it is not the subject here. Yet, because of the weight of that bell tower, however humble it may be, the ceiling underneath it had to be reinforced, and a very unsightly pair of thick stone pillars were erected to that effect, blocking half the view of the ceremony for the congregation... and preventing the photographer from stepping back enough to include in his frame the full triumphal arch, as he intended... Hence the use of a two-exposure panorama, stitched in PTGui software.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.
Finally, this older photo from 2021 was taken during a three-week trip we took to tour the Italian regions of Abbruzzo, Umbria, Marches and Emilia-Romagna. In Ravenna, we visited the mausoleum of Ostrogothic King Theodoric, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Erected around 520-530, this paleo-Christian monument shows an unusual way to assemble arch stones with recesses more typical of Mid-Eastern architecture. Possibly, an architect from Syria or Asia Minor designed it. The most fascinating part about this mausoleum however, is its roof, which is one single block of stone 11 meters in diameter and weighing more than 300 tons. So, of course, I wanted to include at least a small part of the roof, as well as the massive sarcophagus of red porphyry that once contained the remains of the king, which were scattered by the troops of General Belisarius during the Gothic War (535-554). This had to be handheld, as I didn’t have my tripod with me. The two exposures were stitched in PTGui.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Handheld.
In spite of their scarcity in my portfolio, I have managed to locate four vertical panoramas which, not surprisingly, all show old stones... All of them have been created for the same reason, i.e., lack of space to step back to include the whole scene in just one frame.
This first one shows the scriptorium in the Cistercian Abbey of Sénanque in Provence (France). The Cistercians are of course not known for the quality of the decoration in their churches (there is almost none), but are known for the quality of their appareling, i.e., the way stones are adjusted and joined together almost without mortar. So, I wanted to show the elegant curvature of the rib vaulting in that room, as well as the whole of the central supporting column, which is very famous among Mediævalists for its elegance and its... well, decoration, which as we have said is quite unusual for a Cistercian monastery. The tripod was up against the back wall, therefore I had no other option than stitch two exposure together, which was done in Photoshop.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.
The next photo shows the façade of the humble (and yet, not so humble) Benedictine priory church of Veyrines, an isolated village high in the mountains of Ardèche (southeastern France) and one of those truly out-of-the-way historical and architectural jewels that I so love to discover. Because the church is surrounded by village houses (maybe a dozen, tops), the street in front of it was too narrow to step back. The three-exposure panorama was stitched in PTGui. A lot o’ tweaking had to be done there and in Photoshop as the space is so narrow in front of that façade. I don’t believe any full-frontal photograph of the façade exists that fully respects the verticals, except this one. All the others were taken from the sides, and they exhibit horribly converging verticals. The corners of the gable wall look like they’re slightly converging, but that’s because they are in reality: with the passing of centuries, walls may tend to cave in, unless they have to support the weight of a vault (which they don’t in this case, as this church is simply timber-roofed), in which case they often tend to lean outwards under that weight. The central archvolts and columns around the portal are straight because they support no weight but their own, as they’re in the center. The church was built during the 11th century.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.
The next photograph takes us to a small village of the French Alps, not too far from the large city of Grenoble. This village is very special for Mediævalists because it boasts not just one Romanesque church, but two: the parish one, of which the choir and apse are shown below, and another which is a remnant of a hospital house for pilgrims built and managed by the Knights Templar. The parish one, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was built shortly after Year 1000 and shows very nice masonry and decoration work, for such a small village church built without much financial means. It also features a lovely crooked and stubby bell tower which is famous in the whole region, but I will not show it as it is not the subject here. Yet, because of the weight of that bell tower, however humble it may be, the ceiling underneath it had to be reinforced, and a very unsightly pair of thick stone pillars were erected to that effect, blocking half the view of the ceremony for the congregation... and preventing the photographer from stepping back enough to include in his frame the full triumphal arch, as he intended... Hence the use of a two-exposure panorama, stitched in PTGui software.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.
Finally, this older photo from 2021 was taken during a three-week trip we took to tour the Italian regions of Abbruzzo, Umbria, Marches and Emilia-Romagna. In Ravenna, we visited the mausoleum of Ostrogothic King Theodoric, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Erected around 520-530, this paleo-Christian monument shows an unusual way to assemble arch stones with recesses more typical of Mid-Eastern architecture. Possibly, an architect from Syria or Asia Minor designed it. The most fascinating part about this mausoleum however, is its roof, which is one single block of stone 11 meters in diameter and weighing more than 300 tons. So, of course, I wanted to include at least a small part of the roof, as well as the massive sarcophagus of red porphyry that once contained the remains of the king, which were scattered by the troops of General Belisarius during the Gothic War (535-554). This had to be handheld, as I didn’t have my tripod with me. The two exposures were stitched in PTGui.
Nikon Z7 II, F-mount Nikkor 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter. Handheld.
Blue439
New member
I meant to ask, is that a stitched panorama, Marilynne? Do the birds pose for you long enough so that you can take several exposures? I'm curious to know how you do this on a live subject... I did do wildlife photography myself some years back, including herons, and I always found those beasts very twitchy and prone to take flight just at the sound of a DSLR shutter...
Yes, it is stitched. Five handheld shots. They do tend to pose, but sometimes the head is in a different position by the time I get to the bottom. Makes for an interesting photo.
Edit: I've never had one takeoff on me during my shooting.
Blue439
New member
Thank you, it is very nice !
Did you notice the head position in the reflection?Thank you, it is very nice !
What and/or who are you addressing?
