Tag:walls of china
Panorama’s and HDR’s are my two big loves of photography. Yes, I know; we have all seen poorly done HDR (High Digital Resolution) where they almost hurt your eyes. But done right – an HDR is a fabulous image that encompasses highlights and shadows without the clarity slider running amok. I usually call them bracketed shots now when talking to people, as HDR got such a bad name at the height of its use. However, I always do bracketed shots for sunset and sunrise – and when I wanted to create a panorama of sunrise on the Walls of China at Mungo National Park recently – I made the HDR pano below. While the process may be a tad lengthy, it’s easy to do.
Shooting the Image
- Place your camera on a tripod in a vertical orientation and ensure that the tripod and the camera are level.
- Most modern DSLR’s and mirrorless cameras have built-in hdr settings where they automatically take 3, 5 or 7 shots (your choosing). If your camera doesn’t do this, you will need to change the exposure manually each time. Starting at the left of your image, take three shots. Shot #1 is correctly exposed, #2 is one stop underexposed, and #3 is one stop overexposed
- Move your camera to the right, allowing a 30% overlap with the first lot of images. Take another three shots as you did in step 2
- Repeat step 3 until you have taken all the images required, left to right, to create your panorama. In the above image, I had six vertical image sets (3 to each set, so a total of 18 images)
Editing your shot
The first step in my editing was to turn each set of three images into an HDR. To do this, I opened up each set, one set at a time, in Photomatix (click the link to download the free trial). You can do an HDR in LR or Photoshop, but I find that too basic and much prefer Photomatix. There is also Aurora, which I have, but again I find Photomatix superior. It works as a plug-in to LR but not PS, so I use it as a standalone, then save the HDR images before reopening them again to create the panorama.
The preset option allows you to choose between handheld or tripod. I didn’t tick options to remove ghosts as I was on a tripod. You would need to do this if your images were handheld. I also tick the reduce noise on underexposed images only.
The next screen opens up and shows your first completed HDR. The dust spots on the lens you can see here I removed later in PS. I don’t do much here, apart from applying a filter you see in the thumbnails to the right. I chose Balanced. If you tweak, remember to use the same tweaks on each image of your panorama. Click Finish, and it will apply your filter settings.
Now, click on ‘save final image’, then close it, and repeat the above with all the remaining sets of bracketed shots in your panorama.
Creating the Panorama
I first tried PS to create the panorama, but again it was too basic. It didn’t come out straight and didn’t give me the control I wanted. So I opened up the ICE (Image Composite Editor) by Microsoft. It’s a free standalone program that works MUCH better than Photoshop. If you have a MAC and are looking for a free one, you could try Hugin Panorama Stitcher
Open up ICE and click on ‘new panorama from images’. From here, it’s a simple 1 to 4 step process.
With your individual images open and ready, click on 2STITCH
From here, all I needed to do was
If you find your pano has a slight bow in it – place your cursor over the centre point, and you can drag the centre up or down a fraction to level it out. Then, when you are happy with it, click Next.
Crop
In the crop section, you can choose ‘Auto Crop’, and it will crop to within the confines of the image, excluding all the black edges, or ‘no crop’, where it saves it just as it is. I chose this option as I didn’t want to lose any sky. From here, click ‘next’ or 4Export. It will take you to the same screen.
Once your pano is completed, save by clicking on ‘export to disk’ and save to your desired location. To finish off – open in your favourite editing program, e.g. LR or PS, crop to your desired size and save. There is no need to keep your ICE project. I opened mine in Photoshop, cropped in at the sides and bottom – and used content-aware to fill in the sky before tidying up my dust spots. (they were on the lens, not the sensor). I removed the photographer to the right with the spot healing brush, brought the vibrance up to warm the sand a fraction, then sharpened the dunes a tad.
And that’s it! You’re done. I hope you found this helpful and you find ICE useful. I would love to see the HDR panorama you create.
Last night, at Mungo, some of our group had stayed up to shoot Astro. So instead, we (my travel buddy sister and I) had gone off to bed knowing we had an early start the next day. Two of our group, however, were up till all hours, and Maddie still got up for sunrise the following day. Ahh, to be young again, LOL.
The alarm went off at 5.30 am, and amid much groaning and complaining, we were up and out of bed. Knowing how little motivation we would have at this hour of the morning, we had set our clothes out the night before. We had filled the kettle and readied two coffee cups, plus our go cups. With the kettle boiling, we dressed in a gazillion layers of clothing to cope with the cold. We then downed our first cuppa and donned our puffy coats, beanies and gloves. Once ready, we then headed out into the pitch darkness with the camera and tripod, clutching our go cup of steaming coffee and using a torch to light our way to the bus.
sunrise
Our group was heading back to the Walls of China for a sunrise. Mungo Lodge doesn’t usually run sunrise tours, but they had agreed to put one together for us at our request. So thirteen of us piled back on the bus, with two cars following, for the drive out to the walls in the dark. We waited for the sun to come up over the lunette, using the spots we had picked out the night before. Because of the fact we were out in the absolute middle of nowhere, surrounded by a silent landscape untouched for thousands of years, it was an almost spiritual experience.
Before we finished the shoot, I decided to do an HDR pano. So I set my camera for auto bracketing, taking one correctly exposed, another one stop underexposed, and lastly, one stop overexposed. As usual, I then took a pano overlapping each shot by 30% and then edited it once I was home.
With sunrise in the bag, we returned to the bus to return to Mungo Lodge and breakfast. Then, after breakfast, we popped over to visit the emus. Mungo Lodge raised the three chicks with NPWS permission after the parents were killed.
From there, we drove out to make the self-drive trail. But, unfortunately, the road was closed after recent heavy rains where part of it washed away. So our first stop was the old woolshed, a remnant of the pastoral heritage of Mungo.
pastoral heritage
In 1860, Gol Gol station took up 200,000 hectares, covering much of the Willandra Lakes. By 1869, Gol Gol had built the shed as its main shearing base. Chinese labourers constructed a drop log shearing shed out of termite-resistant White Cypress Pine logs using a drop log construction. Vast flocks of sheep used to roam this remote region. The shed was a hive of activity during the shearing season, with 18 men hand-shearing 50,000 sheep in 30 bays.
From the woolshed, we headed towards the parking area of the Walls of China, then followed the road to the right to continue on the self-drive tour. We came across a small waterhole on our way to Red Top Lookout.
Red top lookout
We had reached the locked gate now. However, the road loop was closed due to recent heavy rains washing away the road. So, turning back the way we came, we made a right at the Visitor Centre and headed for the other end of the loop and Zanci Homestead.
Mungo History
By the turn of the century, the massive stations had become unviable because of drought, rabbits, and overuse of grazing, causing widespread erosion. The 1920s saw the subdivision of many of the old runs. In addition, smaller soldier settler blocks were created for veterans returning from WWI. Consequently, in 1921, Gol Gol was broken up into five blocks, with Mungo and Zanci being 16,000 each. Albert and Venda Barnes bought the Mungo block in 1934 from the current owners, Ewan and Angus Cameron. In 1921, Joseph Vigar and his son Roy took over Zanci. Three other blocks were created to the north and south. As a result, the Mungo woolshed was reduced to four machine shearers, and a section of it was removed and rebuilt at Zanci station in 1922.
The Barnes sold Mungo to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) in 1978 after being on the land for 44 years. As a result, Mungo National Park was created in 1979 and added to the World Heritage List in 1989. Since then, Zanci and four other stations have also sold back to NPWS.
Zanci homestead
Given the fact it was nearing lunchtime. So, we headed back to Mungo Lodge. After a delicious lunch (there is no other kind at Mungo Lodge), we all enjoyed some downtime in the afternoon before heading out again for our last sunset.
As darkness fell, we again turned back to Mungo Lodge for dinner and drinks with the gang. It was our last night at Mungo before we all went our separate ways in the morning.
