Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

3.1. Stage 1

3.1.1. Imagining the panorama

Looking at this picture, a panoramic photographer might be perplexed. What camera did I use, and how? Swing-lens or rotating cameras produce similar-looking images, but in my panorama the median line is strangely tilted, and the curved horizon defies all symmetry.

My camera is an ordinary Nikon, and the technique I use to create panoramas isn't limited by the laws of optics or geometry; it only obeys my aesthetic demands. You can produce all sorts of effects without expensive equipment, and the techniques are simple and easy to apply. Look at the picture below, for example, where the ocean seems to sit on the sand like an immense dome. I created it from seven pictures. In positioning the ocean, my only guiding principle was to keep the shoreline straight.

A large panoramic landscape is hard to compose because you can't take it in with a single glance. You choose the starting point and let your camera do its job—and the camera winds up defining the picture. Personally, I prefer letting my imagination impose its point of view. And I enjoy defying the generally accepted principles of composition that state that a horizon should be straight and that a tilted photograph is obviously a mistake. My panoramas match my vision, not any technical demands.

Photography can be a wonderful instrument

in the service of the imagination.

This freedom of expression lets me render my most fantastic imaginations realistically, sometimes with surprising results. ...