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Gotta Love It II

January 27th, 2012

Y-E-SSS!!!

Yes, Virginia! There IS “joy in Muddville” this day! The “Great Pano Project” is nearly completed as of this morning a half an hour ago.

Now to find a way to display it…

And I mean here on my monitor! I know it can be done; ‘did it once before on an earlier version. ‘Just have to remember which program I used to “get it up”, so to speak. :O)

THEN, I’ll pester the Lab about how much $ to print one. Like I said before, I’m perfectly prepared to find out I can’t afford my own art! (Lemme go do a li’l measuring…)

The 2 groups saved to the Desktop measure: 1st Grp, 10 images = 30523 x 3097, and the 2nd Grp = 48172 x 3097! (You do the math!) :O) Naw, I’ll tell ya; it’s a bit over 78.5Mb long! And THAT’s big, in ANYbody’s book!

After all the gyrations this thing has been thru, it’s down to an 8-bit Tiff file, and I think there’s one saved @ 300bpi. That’s the one I’ll talk to the printer about.

So what’s been accomplished here is as follows: From the Rt 301 Bridge to the far end of St. Clement’s I is over 20 miles; and it’s all there, in pretty fair detail. Considering it’s a healthy 5 miles across the Potomac, 6 in spots, I’m quite impressed with the detail. And it’s only taken me 27 days from 1st shot ’til this morning when I got the project “saved”. I’ve learned a boatload about High Dynamic Range Imaging, and more about pano shooting than I’m ever gonna need to know. And if, after talks w/the lab, I can see a way, there might even be an instance of personal profit available.

But it’s DONE, by harry! DONE!

I was gonna let this (post) “lie fallow” for a while, stew it over , maybe add an “excerpt” image to it. Then “blow it on” y’all; but thinkin’ it over won’t change anything, and whatever I want to add can come later. So, shucks, HERE ’tis!

W/ CHEERS!

Tags: "Great Pano Project", 78.5Mb long, as of this morning, High Dynamic Range Imaging, over 20 miles, pano shooting, Rt 301 Bridge to the far end of St. Clement's I
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Gotta Love It…

January 22nd, 2012

…as in, “God! I Love IT!”, when a Plan comes together.

‘Said he, smugly. I’m talking ’bout, “the Great Pano Project”, I think I called it ‘last time. To make a long story short (as I love to do, cause I’m LAZY!) I now have, on my desktop, not one, but SEVERAL full length panoramas, in admittedly varying formats.

I FINALLY (‘capitalised ’cause it was ROUGH! ) found a program that would cut the mission. They’ll (the programmers) remain nameless ’til I can afford to make it right w/’em. Suffice it to say, I “pirated” the program; and like I said, I DO owe somebody and I INTEND to pay for it, if and when I “earn a dime” with it. And THAT’s all dependent on the next few steps; it’s got to be straightened, probably involving some cropping, and I have to figure a way to “look it over” @ a near-100% size. Not gonna trust that it hasn’t been mangled in all the processing. And I’ll have to figure out a way to watermark it.

THEN, if all goes well, I’ll have to take its measure, so to speak. The lab will need to know that (dimensions) in order to figure how much ($) to print it; or… they’ll be rolling all over themselves laughing and “planning their retirements” on it.

And I just couldn’t have anyone else know it before Her Majesty, so I just rolled in and busted up her nap and told her. Since I asked her to, she said, “yippie” and went right back to sleep. Truth to be told, she really did light up a bit at the news; I got a li’l taste of that sweet smile and told her to finish her nap.

Oh yeah! MORE news! ‘Accents is a LOT closer, now! Bre’r Roger and his trusty side-kick have done their thing. It’s still not ready for prime-time, tho’; there’s still a lot to be done. But I think it’ll be down to me, with Roger’s help, to “finish ‘er off”.

And you’ll see a whole new side of ME, artistically anyway. There will be a BOATload of HDR images for your appraisal, and I sincerely hope, approval. ‘All this, as fast as my little legs’ll carry me! (Figuratively speakin’ o’ course;I’m really sittin’ on my dead butt in a comfortable office chair the whole time!) But this hasn’t really been w/o it’s, shall we say, “Challenges”? Lots o’ skull-work, lots o’ trial an error, LOTS o’ reading, and a bunch of sweatin’ (not done, yet) over making a public fool o’ myself.

‘Can’t say when this saga’ll end; but I Promise, you’ll be along for the rest of the ride, win, lose or draw. Now, let’s see what I can find to share…

I just gave an "apprentice therapist" a pair from this set as a thank-you gift for her efforts on my behalf.

Cheers!

Tags: "the Great Pano Project", 'Accents is a LOT closer, found a program that would cut the mission, MORE news!, SEVERAL full length panoramas
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A New Year, a New Project

January 13th, 2012

A Happy New Year to all! I trust everybody partied hearty enough AND got home safe afterwards. Personally, I was in bed by 11:30 and asleep by 11:35. ‘Gettin’ old I guess.

I’ve been hard @ work since the “big night” on a new project; which, given the title of this li’l blast, should come as no surprise. :O)

I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve gotten into HDR imaging and found I like it, a LOT! And I’ve also mentioned in the past that we live on the Potomac River. About 5 min. drive from my house there’s a spot that overlooks the river and one can see the Rt 301 bridge from there. Just a bit downriver from my vantage point is an island, which is the point of 1st landfall for the explorers when they 1st started nosin’ around in these parts.

And in between there’s a LOT o’ river!

I’d thought before of doing a panorama of all that; and for some reason, over the holidays, it occurred to me to combine techniques and make the pano in HDR. I was “convinced” by the DETAIL I was getting in the pieces I’d done already. And if that carries through in this proposed pano, I’ll have one MONSTER picture on my hands.

I did one from our back deck back in the fall and was MOST pleased with it. But It wasn’t ’til around Xmas that I thought of doing in on such a grand scale. This rascal will be 28 images long! I haven’t done the math yet; it won’t be a full 28 with the overlaps factored in; but printed at 16″ tall it’s a fair guess that it’ll run 6′ long! Did I say MONSTER?

I started shooting on it New Year’s Day, but I just wasn’t happy with the results. The pano software cut off a couple frames, or I blew a frame, or… You name it, it went wrong. So I reshot. And reshot again. ‘Different focal lengths, a BIG bunch blown ’cause I missed a setting… you get the idea.

But this morning I finished cleaning up (what’s 3 x 28?) all the jpg’s and ran the HDR software to combine ‘em. ‘Saved ‘em all as 16 bit TIFF’s and here we are. I’m on break!

Next step will be to re-save ‘em all, in a separate folder, as JPG’s, so it won’t take the pano software 3 days to process the thing. And don’t laugh, 28 16 bit TIFFs would take some processing! And, once it’s processed, the final step will be to contact my lab and see what it costs to print Monsters. By then I’ll have the final measurements. I’m fully prepared to find out that I can’t afford my own art. :O)

And I’m also prepared to find that it won’t work. At all. There are necessarily a few seconds between “sets”, and with the wind on the water, there’ll be changes in each shot that may not work together. If that happens, I’ll just have to pick a dead glassy calm day (rare ’round here) AND the light I need. To get ‘em BOTH will require some doing! I’ve got my fingers crossed!

This all started when I showed a fistful at the community clubhouse. I met a gent there who gave me permission to shoot Bald Eagles from his yard right on the river. ‘Haven’t gotten any Eagles yet, but…

I’ll sign off now and keep y’all posted on the Great Pano Project as it (‘scuse the term) develops.

Oh, yeah; here’s the shot I was so pleased with…