Drakensberg panoramic

Another photoshop technique I have been playing with a lot lately is panoramic stitching. To this end I have actually invested in an old Shift Lens. This shot, however, was captured using a 28-105mm zoom lens set at 28mm. It consists of three horizontal shots with quite a large overlap between each shot.

My concern is whether the image is too 'dark'. Any comments?

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Painting with Light

For all who are interested I have just posted a new tutorial on painting with light. You can access the tutorial directly by hitting the link. All my tutorials are updated as and when I find out new techniques, obtain better illustrative images, or simply improve the way the tutorial is laid out. If you have any suggestions regarding the Painting with Light tutorial please let me know by commenting on this post. Hope you find the link useful.

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Photoshop Shortcuts

Recently a number of students have asked for a sheet of Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. Yes, anyone can go into the shortcuts menu in PS, but often novice PS users don't even know that this menu exists. I've now posted a printable pdf of all the shortcuts that I use. You can find this on my website under the tutorials page or simply click on the link for the actual page here.

Hope you find this useful.

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Star Trails

Been quiet on the web front lately. Here's a shot from about two months ago of a star trail over Cathedral Peak. This is a new technique that I learnt recently from an article on NPN. I've been teaching it now through my workshops in St Lucia and the Drakensberg and the results get better each time. This was the first multiple exposure star trail that I attempted. Basically set up your camera with your chosen composition and start a series of shots lasting no longer than 10 minutes each. At the end of each shot immediately take another one until you feel you have enough 'trail' in your sky. Open the whole lot in PS and pile them on top of each other with the blend mode set to lighten. Viola - a noiseless startrail (noise being the greatest hurdle to overcome with digital long exposures). Eventually I'll get round to writing a tutorial I suppose.

For anyone who is interested there are two decent articles on composition in this months NPN (http://www.naturephotographers.net) which are worth reading.

Cheers
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