Welcome to New Zealand!

Probably the most travel-filled month of my life, February was a month where I visited Hanoi in Vietnam and also Queenstown in New Zealand. You'll find the Hanoi photos further down. This is one of the first shots I took when I arrived on a bright sunny morning in New Zealand. Needless to say, the view is simply breathtaking. A little walk down from the hotel in Queenstown, NZ and you get this view. One of the reasons I love taking panoramas is that I naturally like to frame photos with stuff on the sides, and it works really well with panoramas. Nikon D7000, AF-S 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

Chopper Panorama

Here's a shot I took as a panorama but forgot about until I went through all my New Zealand photos again. :D Thing is that each photo in this particular series that I took for the panorama looked like it could stand on its own so I didn't really think they were connected until I took a long look at them recently. As far as my numerous panoramas go, this is one of my favourites, as the framing is just right -- there's some foreground interest, and a nice background of mountains and right at the corner on the right, a helicopter. Doing panoramas these days has become a lot easier -- I never put it on a tripod these days and instead just stand and shoot so the virtual horizon helps keep the horizon as level as possible as I pan across. After that Photoshop CS4 does all the work and stitches it all quite seamlessly. This is a 180-degree shot made up of 5-6 shots. Unfortunately, Blogspot's resizing of photos means that you can't really appreciate the photo at the size that's ideal. Nikon D7000, AF-S Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Lake Wakatipu Pano

This panorama of Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand is actually the same balcony view as the one below this post, except taken at a different time and of course, made up of four different shots. I always resort to panoramas because I often feel that its difficult to convey the full majesty of a place unless you get a wider view. Nikon D7000, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

Ha Long Panorama

This is a Ha LONG Panorama, gettit? :) Anyway, what trip would be complete without a panorama shot from me? These days I'm so used to taking panoramas that I shoot off a series of shots like this without needing a tripod. Just meter for one area, set it to manual exposure and then shoot away, trying to keep the horizon level while doing so. This time I'm actually trying out Microsoft's own Image Composite Editor, which can handle Gigapixel images and will even support RAW files that Windows 7 supports. It's free and if you're interested you can get it from here. Nikon D7000, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6.

Tai Mo Shan Panorama

It looks like it's starting to be a yearly thing -- me going to Hong Kong, I mean. As I've said before, the Hong Kong I see is completely different from most people's idea of Hong Kong (big, metropolitan concrete jungle) -- thanks to my environmentalist brother's job, I get to experience what a large part of Hong Kong is actually like. Believe it or not, the city is actually a very small part of the whole of Hong Kong, although the tourism board would have you believe otherwise.

Anyway this panorama is shot on Tai Mo Shan in the New Territories, one of the taller (if not tallest) peaks in Hong Kong, and a very nice picnic spot. Adobe Photoshop CS4 is actually an amazing tool for stitching together images -- it makes blending and correctly aligning the various images (in this case 5 images covering a full 180-degrees) extremely simple. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't scale panoramas well and it compresses the shot into a very small ghost of the original so you can't really see how much detail and how large this shot is. Click for a larger (but still lousy) version. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mmf/4

Bukit Tabur Pano

I haven't updated in awhile, largely because I've been on the daily grind of work for awhile. However I recently did take a hiking trip out to Bukit Tabur in Taman Melawati, Kuala Lumpur and took some photos. Bukit Tabur itself is a hill largely made up of quartz and is pretty interesting -- the moderately difficult and seriously dangerous trail means that the area is largely unspoiled even though it's smack in the middle of a housing area. The hill overlooks a lake which is a also a fresh water reservoir. As usual, when taking shots for panoramas, it's important to keep the exposure the same. As far as framing goes, I always try to frame the image by including some foreground interest, especially in the edges. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

Dom Panorama

As the few readers of this photoblog must have noticed by now, I'm always enamoured with doing panoramas of the places I've visited. I guess it all dates back to an article I read, when I was a teen, in Practical Photography about a so-called Hockney Joiner. For those not in the know, David Hockney is a famous British artist who also took photographs and created what is called a "Joiner" -- the thing about Hockney's joiners is that they were simply brilliant -- they didn't join properly and in fact were shot from different positions and focal lengths then joined together into a collage. The brilliant part is that even though they were put together in a seemingly haphazard fashion, they actually made sense as a whole. Very interesting!

Anyway, it was because of Hockney Joiners that I started taking photos in school and joining them up like this, although unfortunately, none of that work still survives today since it was all on film and prints and is now lost somewhere. As a result of this, I've had an interest in making joiners ever since.

While my shot of the Kohln Dom in Germany is far from being a Hockney Joiner, I really like the weird perspective this particular one gives me. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

All along the watchtower

Apparently, this hill with the three pagodas was where Kublai Khan's palace once stood. The palace was demolished on orders from the Emperor after the Mongols were finally driven out of the Kingdom. These pagodas were built on top and overlooks the Forbidden City from the South. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

Forbidden City Gates

This photo turned out very well, I thought -- I could have joined these shots together without the major distortion, but I think it looks more balanced this way -- architectural accuracy be damned! The major challenge with this shot is taking the series as fast as possible to avoid having duplicate humans here and there as they move from shot to shot. Amazingly, the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 photomerge is incredible at avoiding cutting humans up even in a complicated scene like this. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 VR

Forbidden City Panorama

Yes, what series of shots from me would be complete without a few panorama shots. This is the main courtyard for the Forbidden City and covers about a 180-degree field of view made up of about 4 shots. Like all my panoramas these days, the shots are just simply shot handheld -- the only thing to remember when shooting photos for panoramas is to meter the scene and then lock down the shutter and aperture to the same settings for each shot. Failing to do this will cause one or two shots to be brighter or darker than the others. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm VR

Perhentian Panorama

The photos for this panoramic was shot years ago, but it wasn't until tonight that I decided to revisit some of my old shots and recreate this.

These shots were taken when I was still a greenhorn at creating panoramas, and due to the slight exposure differences and the major distortion from shot to shot, I was unable to make a satisfying panorama from the shots.

However, a few years on, I decided to retry again with Adobe Photoshop CS3's new automate panorama feature and amazingly it came out nearly perfect on the first try. I did tweak it slightly after that but this is almost exactly how it came out in Photoshop CS3. There's still a bit of exposure difference near the joints of the shots, but it's actually not bad at all.

This panorama is about a 180-degree field of view. Do click on it to really appreciate the shot in larger size. Nikon D70, AF Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6

Taking a break

This is in fact a fake panorama -- I just chopped off the top half of this image to make it, as opposed to joining a number of shots together. However, I had intended to do this when I took the picture -- when I framed this in-camera, I realised that it had potential as a nice panorama shot but the 3:2 aspect ratio of my camera means that I would get too much sky and top, which would have spoiled the framing. In light of this, I just took the picture, making sure that it was as level as possible, then cropped off the top half that I didn't want. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G

Japanorama

The Cherry Blossoms (Sakura) are nearly in full bloom at the end of March and beginning of April in Tokyo, Japan. Some interesting facts: there are 305 different varieties of ornamental sakura trees in Japan and they are different from the fruit-bearing cherry trees. This white variety is called Somei Yoshino and is the most popular variety in Japan. This shot is a joiner made up of about 3 images I shot specifically to turn into this panorama. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

NB: Changed the title of this post as suggested by Chris Chong

Kathmandu Panorama

A panorama of Kathmandu, joined from 5 images. Legend has it that the valley that is now Kathmandu was once a lake and at some point it was drained to form this large flat valley on which the city now stands. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm VR

Rest stop

A panorama created from three shots. This was taken very early on in our trek -- after a series of endless stairs, this little rest stop selling soft drinks and snacks looked like heaven. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mmVR

Jagged edge

I joined two photos together to get this closeup of the side of Annapurna1. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm VR

Annapurna panorama

My first panorama in Nepal, and I think the best. This is a massive image joined together from 4-5 shots I took. Metering was tricky and I had to shoot a few test shots first to determing exact exposure to ensure the mountains were correctly exposed before locking down the camera settings and shooting. A tripod was used here. For your information, the mountains are (left to right) Annapurna1 (8091m), Hiunchuli (6441) and Machapuchare (aka Fishtail, 6993m). A temple sits on the far left. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm VR

Poon Hill Panorama

This is a joiner created from 4 images I shot for this specific purpose. While it is always preferable to use a tripod for a panorama like this, it's just too slow for situations like this, it's just too slow to set up and the people would have moved by the time you're ready for the next shot. In this case, I just locked the shutter and aperture on my camera and then shot handheld, as I slowly turned for each shot. It's really too bad that Blogger can't display these shots larger because it's really interesting to look closely at the shot and see what each and every person is doing! The original is actually HUGE, at 10530 x 2488 pixels -- that's equivalent to a 26megapixel image! Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm VR

Muktinath

This is a panorama of the final destination on our long trek, Muktinath temple, a Hindu and Buddhist temple situated just south of the Thorong-la high mountain pass. The image was joined from two images which I just shot handheld then joined in Photoshop. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Tea houses

Well, they're not really teahouses, but are in fact the residences of the workers of the Boh Tea farm. This was stitched together from just two images. Nikon D70, AF-S DX VR Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED