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Mountain panorama #5

Panoramic photo of mountains, Dachstein Massiv, Austria

The story behind this image

Imagine waking up just before sunrise, staggering out onto the balcony of your Alpine lodge with the first coffee of the day steaming gently in your fist, and seeing this.

You then think , 'hmm, this could be worth a photo or two', so you pad back into your room where your camera/tripod combo is set up waiting to go, move it a couple of metres out onto the balcony, frame up and start the first shoot of the day.

This is definately not what I'm used to when it comes to dawn photography!

I photographed the scene shown here under the exact circumstances described previously, and what you're seeing here is the dawn view over Schladming in Austria, taken as a series of overlapping frames and then stitched together in Photoshop CS5. I still don't know how Photoshop CS5 makes such a fantastic job of this, but its one of the tricks that it does really well.

In the background haze is the Dachstein Massiv, a really quite impressive lump of karstic limestone and extremely photogenic - but more of that to come.

So, having shot several versions of the view from our balcony, what's it to be? Back to bed, or on with the toaster? What a life!

Image data


Filename - mountain panorama 05.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 50mm

Exposure - 1/4sec @ f11, ISO100

Location - Schladming and the Dachstein Massiv, Austria

This image - 900x226px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS5

Comments - Tripod, mirror lockup and cable release used to prevent camera movment. Images stitched in PhotoShop CS5