Photo Safaris By Region AFRICA - Botswana Wildlife - Madagascar - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya ANTARCTICA - Ultimate Antarctica ASIA - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - India—Rajasthan & Puskar Fair - Japan's Winter Wildlife - Laos & Vietnam - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival EUROPE - Best of the Greek Isles - Eclectic Holland - Finland's Arctic Wildlife - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Tuscany - White Horses of France's Camargue NORTH AMERICA - Alaska Overland - Aurora Borealis—Fairbanks, Alaska - Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River, Alaska - Bosque del Apache & White Sands, New Mexico - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Summer - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Colorado Fall Colors - Denali National Park in Autumn - Exploring Lake Powell - Florida Birds—Best of the West - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Great Smoky Mountains - Horses & Icons of the Wild West - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage - Mexico's Colonial Heartland - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - Olympic National Park, Washington - Predatory Animals of North America - Springtime in Callaway Gardens, Georgia - Ultimate Wolves - Ultimate Yellowstone - Washington's Palouse Country - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons in Autumn - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw PACIFICA - Midway Atoll SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA - Galápagos - Patagonia's Mountain Landscapes - Ultimate Dolphins Wildlife Models Shoot - Wildlife of Brazil's Pantanal Photo Safaris By Date JANUARY - Ultimate Wolves - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw, Dallas, TX & Raleigh, NC - Ultimate Yellowstone FEBRUARY - Japan's Winter Wildlife MARCH - Florida Birds—Best of the West - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw, Phoenix, AZ & Boston, MA - Midway Atoll - Aurora Borealis—Fairbanks, Alaska - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - White Horses of France's Camargue APRIL - Springtime in Callaway Gardens, Georgia - Galápagos - Finland's Arctic Wildlife - Patagonia's Mountain Landscapes - Eclectic Holland - Great Smoky Mountains - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Mexico's Colonial Heartland MAY - Wildlife of Brazil's Pantanal - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Ultimate Dolphins Wildlife Models Shoot - Best of the Greek Isles - Tuscany JUNE - Washington's Palouse Country - Predatory Animals of North America JULY - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Summer - Olympic National Park, Washington AUGUST - Washington's Palouse Country - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage SEPTEMBER - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya - Denali National Park in Autumn - Alaska Overland - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Madagascar - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons in Autumn - Botswana Wildlife - Colorado Fall Colors - Predatory Animals of North America - Horses & Icons of the Wild West - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival OCTOBER - Exploring Lake Powell - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - India—Rajasthan & Puskar Fair NOVEMBER - Laos & Vietnam - Ultimate Antarctica - Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River, Alaska DECEMBER - Bosque del Apache & White Sands, New Mexico

		Unbelievable Madagascar September 14–October 1, 2007 India Wildlife: On the Trail of the Tiger November 7–24, 2007 Angkor Wat & Bagan—Temples of Cambodia and Myanmar January 17–31, 2008 Our eyes don't view the world vertically or horizontally—we see panoramas. In the past, photographing panoramas required either special equipment or manipulation of the negative or slide. Medium format 6x17 cameras, such as the Fuji or the Linhof, cost many thousands of dollars for a body and a few lenses but produced stunning results. 35mm cameras with the same aspect ratio could deliver panoramas with modest resolution. Digital photography allows us to stitch together consecutive images to create a high resolution panorama with our existing lenses and digital camera. As an added advantage, each element of the panorama adds information and increases the file size and thus the resolution of the finished print. You can effectively increase the resolution of your camera by stitching together three verticals side-by-side to create a single horizontal image. This image will have three times the resolution of a single horizontal image shot with that camera. I use this trick when I want to carry my lower resolution (and much lighter) camera on a hike instead of my brick-heavy main body. If you want to create a true panorama, stitch two horizontal pictures or a series of verticals. However, with verticals the file size of your final image becomes quite large and cumbersome, especially in uncompressed formats. Large files are ideal for very large prints. Creating the raw materials needed for effective stitching demands care and luck while shooting. For example, on a windy day the branches of trees waving in the wind won't line up properly where two images should meet. Since a horizontal panorama can cover a large area of sky, polarizers can vignette ferociously and require some tinkering in an editing program to blend the blue. If people or animals walk through the shot, they may show up twice in the same panorama. They can often be cut out in Photoshop or a similar program, but the efficient photographer will avoid such a problem in-camera. Shoot in manual mode. Program, aperture priority, and shutter priority often change exposure from frame to frame, which makes blending the images more difficult. If you shoot in RAW format, make sure you apply identical settings in the RAW editor. Most editors have provisions for applying the same settings from the previous image to the next or to batch edit a group of pictures. The major editing programs all offer tools for creating panoramas, and a number of plug-ins exist to automate the process. As usual, Photoshop provides several methods for stitching pictures together. Photomerge performs many steps automatically and will yield good results if you take care while capturing the image. First, make sure the edges of each picture overlap about 15% of each image. This will give the program enough common points to align the images correctly. Second, use a tripod. While it's possible to create a panorama of a series of handheld images, swiveling the camera using the horizontal movement of the tripod head will produce the most common points in adjacent images, which helps Photoshop or other program align the images and also will give you more usable space. When handholding, you tend to move the camera vertically, creating areas that will have to be cropped out to rate the final rectangle. Using a tripod also yields a larger file (i.e., more information). Load the images into Photoshop and convert them into TIFF or Photoshop format. (Many of the plug-ins only work with 8-bit files. Go to Mode in the Image menu to change the files from 16-bit to 8-bit.) Choose Automate in the File menu and select Photomerge. You can also reach Photomerge in the File Browser under Automate. This saves steps as you can select the pictures and open Photomerge at the same time. The Photomerge dialog box opens and provides two ways to select the images for the panorama, either by automatically selecting previously opened images or allowing you to select photos or folders. Check the box in the lower left corner so Photomerge will automatically assemble your panorama. Once you've selected the images, click OK. If you shot with enough overlap, Photomerge displays the new panorama. If it looks good, click OK again. The panorama will open as a flattened image that you can save. Use the crop tool to trim extraneous material. Sometimes Photomerge has trouble lining up the images. When that happens, a dialog box opens announcing you have more work to do. Click OK. Photomerge then displays the part of the panorama that it could construct in the main window while relegating the parts that confused it to a light box above. Check the Snap to Image box in the lower right hand corner before setting to work. Then, drag one of the pictures from the light box down to the image under construction. Align it as closely as possible before releasing the mouse button. Photomerge will then blend them together if enough overlap is present. A number of Photoshop-compatible plug-ins exist for constructing panoramas, including REAKVIZ Stitcher, Panoweaver, 3D Vista Studio and many others, all with differing strengths and weaknesses. I sometimes prefer Panorama Maker over Photomerge when the sky needs significant blending. Sometimes Photomerge and the other plugins cant assemble the panorama correctly. When tweaking the final image in Photoshop wont solve the problem, building the panorama from scratch is the answer. Open the left-hand image. Then, go to Canvas Size in the Image menu to add enough width to accommodate all the pictures. Check the Relative box in the menu and click the left-center box of the anchor grid. The Canvas will expand to the right of the first image to allow room for the panorama to grow. Open a layer for each additional image, leaving adequate overlap. When melding one image with another, lower the opacity of the top layer by 50% so you can see both images at the same time to align the pixels. Once you have it aligned, bring the opacity back to 100%. Repeat as you add pictures to the panorama. Flatten the resulting image and enjoy your new panorama. Note: Scott Kelbys Photoshop CS for Digital Photographers contains excellent step-by-step instructions for assembling panoramas using layers.

	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383   Fax: (206) 463-5484    Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.