2 Pro Misty Autumn Forest Sunrise

[Robert Prior]

Sometimes you get lucky, and you're in the right place at the right time.

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Mind you, I'd been getting up before dawn and driving over an hour to the forest for weeks, so there were a lot of mornings I didn't get mist, or it was too thick to fly, or raining, or too windy… but the rare morning like this made the lost sleep worthwhile.

 

[MS Coast]

Sometimes you get lucky, and you're in the right place at the right time.

RoundMe ▷ A mobile app to watch sports in VR

Download the RoundMe app: Dive into the action and experience your matches fully immersed from your living room with Virtual Reality!

roundme.com

Mind you, I'd been getting up before dawn and driving over an hour to the forest for weeks, so there were a lot of mornings I didn't get mist, or it was too thick to fly, or raining, or too windy… but the rare morning like this made the lost sleep worthwhile.

Those are absolutely stunning shots. Luck? No, I'd say it's more about being out there day after day and being very skilled. Very nice work.

Care to share any details about what you were flying and how you shot and processed the panoramas?

 

[Chrislaf]

Beautiful VR panos! Fall colours are starting to come out. I have been keeping an eye on the colours here in Barrie.

Chris

 

[Robert Prior]

Care to share any details about what you were flying and how you shot and processed the panoramas?

Flying a Mavic 2 Pro.

Shot several spherical panoramas in manual mode, bracketing the exposure by 2 stops. (3-4 panoramas needed depending on lighting.)

Brought all photographs into PTGUI Pro, had it align and stitch an HDR panorama. Did a fair bit of work with control points, especially eliminating control points on clouds (which were moving too much between exposures) and adding lots of control points near the horizon (where parallax error is especially visible). Had PTGUI stitch the panoramas as separate blend planes.

Imported the blend planes into Photomatix. They are already aligned, so just had to pick the right tone-mapping settings. 360° and opting for the most realistic lighting effect is my usual starting point. Exported as a 16-bit TIFF.

Ran that through Color Efex for a bit of detail enhancing and tonal contrast.

Opened both the original tone-mapped panorama and the Color Efex processed one in Affinity Photo. Used masks so the Color Efex editing was only applied to the ground. (It makes the sky look to defined and unrealistic.) Used the equirectangular viewer to scroll around and touch up the image. Used inpainting on the top part of the sky that the camera couldn't see.

Total time roughly 1-2 hours for the finished product.

 

[MS Coast]

Flying a Mavic 2 Pro.

Shot several spherical panoramas in manual mode, bracketing the exposure by 2 stops. (3-4 panoramas needed depending on lighting.)

Brought all photographs into PTGUI Pro, had it align and stitch an HDR panorama. Did a fair bit of work with control points, especially eliminating control points on clouds (which were moving too much between exposures) and adding lots of control points near the horizon (where parallax error is especially visible). Had PTGUI stitch the panoramas as separate blend planes.

Imported the blend planes into Photomatix. They are already aligned, so just had to pick the right tone-mapping settings. 360° and opting for the most realistic lighting effect is my usual starting point. Exported as a 16-bit TIFF.

Ran that through Color Efex for a bit of detail enhancing and tonal contrast.

Opened both the original tone-mapped panorama and the Color Efex processed one in Affinity Photo. Used masks so the Color Efex editing was only applied to the ground. (It makes the sky look to defined and unrealistic.) Used the equirectangular viewer to scroll around and touch up the image. Used inpainting on the top part of the sky that the camera couldn't see.

Total time roughly 1-2 hours for the finished product.

Thanks very much for outlining your work flow. I'm impressed that you can accomplish all that in 1-2 hours. This reminds of when I was running a website for a marine lab. In writing content, I'd spend an hour or so talking with one of the scientists while nodding and taking notes furiously. Then I'd go home and spend a few hours looking up terms and learning enough to understand what I'd heard. I have some reading to do on photo editing.

I looked at some of your other work on roundme.com. Wow. There are some really wonderful shots. The mechanics (alignment, stitching) seem flawless and the color is wonderful. The HDR work you do really pays off. The images have a fine sense of depth and presence. I like that HDR not "over done" or tending toward artificial.

I'd encourage anyone interested in panoramas to have a look - Robert Prior. Now I know what to shoot for.