Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

4.2. Stage 2

4.2.1. First attempt

Once the framing and lighting were settled, I took a first series of pictures with the Sinar view camera, following the sketch I had made. Since self-portraits were involved, I needed to see how the scene worked in "real time."

Given the lighting arrangement, this was the only way for me to see what was happening in the picture so the final output would be exactly what I wanted. As with shooting a movie, you must play a scene over and over again until you get it right, so you have a wide range of performances to choose from. This indirectly affects retouching, because the more "right" a scene looks, the more it draws viewers in, and the more they're willing to overlook minor retouching errors.

I decided to give myself as much time as I needed to accomplish what I wanted.

I did a quick, rough montage in Photoshop using the shots I had just taken. I overlaid the layers with layer masks without bothering to outline them very carefully with the Airbrush tool, in order to get an idea of the work that lay ahead.

I immediately realized that the fourth character from the left was all wrong: he gave the scene a "jokey" look, and wasn't believable. The fifth character also attracted too much attention. Though bathed in warm light, he appeared to be cold, which created a contradictory impression; that wouldn't do.

The overall composition, on the other hand, seemed fine, so I could now move on to taking the final set of pictures. For this second round of ...