Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Epson International Pano Awards has announced the winners of its 2022 contest. And just like the images they shared back in April to inspire you, the winning images are equally powerful and gorgeous.
This year, the winner is Jinyi He from China with three entries in the Open awards. His image The Vein is the overall winner, followed by two more breathtaking landscapes.
The Epson International Pano Awards share its last contest’s winners in October last year. Time flies, and now it’s time for new submissions. The competition is now open for entries and there are some tempting prizes involved. To inspire you further, The Epson International Pano Awards has also shared some of the last year’s submissions we haven’t seen so far, and they’re stunning as always!
In this article, I am planning to discuss the way I use my DJI Mini 2, a cheap drone that many people dismiss as being a toy for beginners in order to get photos and animations that stand out. While spreading my belief that with great knowledge you can overcome the limitations of your gear & budget.
I don’t know if this ever happens to someone else, but sometimes I leave home thinking that I would go in one place and end up in an entirely different one. This is what happened to me on the 5’th of March. The universe was calling, I responded and ended up on a hill near Brasov, Romania looking at one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever witnessed.
Capture One has announced its new Capture One 22 software. Or at least, they’ve announced that it’s coming. With a release date of December 9th, it brings with it two pretty significant and highly requested features. The first is native panoramic stitching. Yes, that’s right. No longer do you need to export them out and bring them into another piece of software, you can now stitch from within Capture One itself straight from your raw files.
The new Capture One 22 is also able to create merged HDR files within the software as well, allowing you to exceed the dynamic range of just a single raw file for maximum versatility in high contrast scenes. Unfortunately, there’s no teaser video yet showing these new features in action, but they do have a live stream scheduled on their YouTube channel for December 9th when it’s officially released.
There are a lot of choices out there these when it comes to 360° cameras, and while many of them are very good, the really good ones capable of shooting super high resolution are extremely expensive. But all is not lost. You can still get very high resolution 360° my simply stitching multiple shots from a regular camera together. Even something like a GoPro action camera.
In this video from My Tech Fun, we see how we can use a 3D printed panoramic mount (also designed by My Tech Fun – and free to download) in order to shoot 12K 360° images with an action camera. While GoPro does have their own 360° camera, this will offer a lot more resolution and detail when zooming through the image on the desktop.
Sometimes, we see something that we want to make a photograph of. But we don’t just want to grab a quick snap and go on our merry way. We instantly have a vision in our heads. We know how we want that final image to look. But we can’t. We don’t have our gear with us, or it’s the wrong type of weather or time of year. Whatever.
That’s how photographer Nick Carver felt when he stumbled across this liquor store while visiting his future in-laws in Santa Barbara. Instantly he fell in love with it and knew he had to photograph it. He’s been waiting a long time to do it, but he finally has, and he documented his process of shooting it on super wide 6×17 medium format film.
It took Mexico based photographer Felix Hernández five years and several trips to New York City to be able to get this shot. Not being from the USA, NYC isn’t a place that Felix gets to visit very often. It took him several trips just to find the right spot from which to shoot. But when he finally did, was able to make this wonderful day to night panorama transition.
I make quite a few stitched panoramics. Occasionally I shoot them when I go on holiday and find a cool place. Mostly, though, I shoot them when I’m location scouting. When I come across a new area to potentially photograph somebody in the future, I fire off a few shots to stitch in post. They’re very handy for that. But they often suffer from the same problem. All kinds of warping and perspective issues.
The effect is bad enough if your lens already has some natural distortion of its own. When multiple images are stitched it worsens the issue. This video from photographer Rex Jones comes to the rescue, though, showing us how we can correct it in Photoshop. A great method for perfect distortion free images.
Paul Kohlhaussen, a student from Richmond in London has created a fully functioning 3D printed camera. Paul took the best features from an array of costly high-end cameras and reverse engineered them into the camera of his dreams. Without the funds to afford the camera he needed to get the perfect shot he wanted and no knowledge of CAD, Paul taught himself everything from scratch when designing and building the eight components that make up the camera’s modular design.
There comes a point in a timelapse photographer’s journey that one wants to do something different. They want to try to push the techniques and their own abilities. To try to create something new and interesting. Many such experiments don’t work quite as we’d intended, but oftentimes, they can work extremely well.
The latter is the case for photographer and filmmaker Joe Capra. Joe’s constantly trying to take his work beyond the previous limits. You might remember some of his past work that we’ve featured, such as the 12K Timelapse shot on the Phase One IQ3. Now Joe’s back with a new timelapse of Los Angeles which was shot using a pair of Canon 5D Mark III bodies side-by-side on a custom rig.
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