Aaronel and Digital Panoramas

Aaronel continued to make panoramas with the Olympus C2020Z, not with a swing lens of course, like the Widelux and Noblex, but with software. To accomplish this she had to visualize how a certain subject would look as a panorama. For sure she had several years of experience with her swing lens film cameras. However, instead of one push of the shutter, she needed several.

Making panoramas with digital cameras was not new at this time. The procedure was to turn the camera vertical and zoom in a bit on your subject. Then starting at the extreme left, or right, of the scene, start making exposures, moving the camera and overlapping a little part of the scene in each one. A tripod was highly recommended. Remember from the previous post that the R-72 filter is dense and that the 2020 was notoriously slow writing data to the Smart Media?

Now Aaronel was never one to follow convention. She would hand hold her camera, make the exposures while impatiently waiting for the data to write, move on to the next scene, repeat the exposure sequence and sort all it out back in the office on the computer. When you think about it, her extensive production throughout her entire career, not just photography, was due to this type of determination.

The individual images were blended together using software. In the beginning we used Panorama Factory (which is still available) and soon transitioned to Photoshop as stitching capabilities were included in updates. In the examples below you can see how the four individual images were stitched together to create the panorama of Carrie Furnace, 2009, (Carrie Furnace, an abandoned blast furnace built in 1884 is located in Swissvale Pennsylvania). 

In the final image above, the individual images were simply stitched together and not blended and the irregular edges were left in place. This was to draw attention to the fact that several exposures were used. Aaronel, always experimenting and exploring different methods to express herself, used several blending techniques and edge treatments.

Click on the above image to view a gallery of digital panoramas taken by Aaronel using the 2020. We are offering a selection of these images for sale from our inventory. If you are interested in purchasing any of these prints or would like more information, please contact me using the form at the right.