ON LOCATION: GEORGIA AROUNDER SHOOT
by M. Bienias
Scott L. Robertson shot the panoramas for Arounder Georgia. Robertson is a VR, editorial, commercial and stock photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. His photography can be seen at www.slrobertson.com. He is also a research scientist at IMTC, Georgia Tech.Camera and lens: Nikon D2X with Nikon 10.5 mm DX full-frame Fisheye lens. Pano head: Really Right Stuff modular spherical panorama rig. Robertson used an Apple 17” Macbook Pro for location image editing and previewing, stitched 10k x 5k spherical panoramas using PTGui and PanoTools on both the Macbook (running Windows XP under bootcamp and Parallels Desktop) and a dual processor Dell workstation. ”I often use multiple exposure bracketing and high dynamic range (HDR) image blending techniques when shooting panoramas,” he says, “especially when scene lighting has extended dynamic range such as deep outdoor shadows combined with bright sunlight.”
His HDR workflow includes stitching separate panoramas for each exposure, converting these low dynamic range (LDR) panoramas into a single 32-bits per pixel HDR image using Photomatix (www.hdrsoft.com) and compressing highlights and shadows using Photoshop CS2’s HDR to LDR tone-mapping function. “I prefer the HDR results from Photomatix and the tone-mapping results from Photoshop CS2, so I use both tools together.” Robertson found the most difficult panoramas to produce on the Arounder Georgia shoot were the interior shots at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. “It is always challenging to stitch multiple-image panoramas when objects in the scene are moving, such as crowds of people milling about, and when the scene lighting is rapidly changing,” he explains. “Both occurred to a nearly maddening degree while shooting the Georgia Aquarium exhibits. During the interior exposures, aquarium visitors were constantly walking around the camera and tripod, even repeatedly bumping my rig in the tight quarters of a plexiglas tunnel through the aquarium’s whale shark tank. Further, the ambient lighting in the various exhibit halls was quite low while the actual tank windows were often relatively bright necessitating high ISOs, long exposures and extreme exposure stop bracketing to hold detail in both bright and dark regions. Nearly every panorama taken inside the aquarium required extensive retouching in Photoshop, but overall, I’m quite pleased with the results.” Scott L. Robertson Photography / slrobertson.com
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