Thoughts on Panoramic Images
We've had an interesting discussion on the Facebook group in this past week about what constitutes a panoramic image. So I thought I'd pull together some thoughts on panoramic photography.
So What Is a Panoramic Photo?
On the face of it a panoramic image is pretty obvious, something that's a lot wider than it is tall, the traditional letterbox shape for instance. However, as we've seen this week, there is a school of thought that a panoramic image should be wide, covering around 160°. That is really very wide.
I think there's a defacto standard, a view that most people hold, that for an image to be panoramic it needs to be much longer than it is tall. Anything really from being twice as wide as it is high, a 2 x 1 crop. I really enjoy 2 x 1 panos but I really love 3 x 1 as a crop factor. Of course you really go to town and make the images as long as you want them to be but beware, the longer the image the more difficult they are to compose.
Composition
Shooting panoramic images can be great fun but creating effective and attractive compositions can be difficult; you just have to search for panos on Flickr to see a plethora of poor images without a strong composition. Don't rely on the panoramic frame as being the compositional tool. We still need to find a strong composition within the frame.
I posted a bunch of photos last week and I thought I'd use them as a set of composition examples.
Old Granary
Simple composition that reads from right to left, with the foreground boats leading your eye across to the old granary.
Sea Wall
Converging lines of the path and vegetation leads the eye through the image. Foreground vegetation is used to provide interest in the picture and without this, the image becomes very bland.
Decaying Trees
The graphic shape of the water leads your eye through the picture up to and across the old trees. I've boosted the light on the grass in the foreground to ensure the grass isn't just a big flat area without interest. Areas of vegetation are negative space. It's a different way of thinking about a panoramic image but negative space plays an important role in photographic composition, no more so than in panos.
The Bench
Ok, so this is an interesting one. A panoramic image which is all about the subject smack bang in the centre. It's only about the bench, with everything else providing context, effectively becoming negative space. It would be an excellent location to shoot a portrait of someone.
To Go Vertical?
Fiona raised a question of whether a panoramic image can be vertical. Again, the defacto answer to this is yes as it's all about the shape of the picture. However, shooting effective vertical panos can be very difficult. There are few vertical panos that feel comfortable on the eye and even then they can feel like a gimmick. Choose a subject that really will shine in this format.
I went out searching in Tollesbury and found a few pictures that work in a vertical pano, although the composition is pretty much the same in each. Maybe in an area where there is more elevation, in a city or in the mountains, we could find alternative compositions but it remains far more difficult than composing horizontal panos.
An Alternative View
So far, I've talked about panoramic images in pictorial terms, much longer than they are tall, and that is normally what we think of but is there a different way of thinking about this subject?
When thinking about the word Panorama, we get two distinct definitions. The first is our pictorial version; 'an unbroken view of the whole region surrounding an observer'; 'a picture or photograph containing a wide view' and so on.
However there is another definition. Think about the TV programme Panorama. It's not named after a pictorial style, the name signifies something which is going to provide a more in depth understanding of issues which may be summarised on our normal news programmes, a more in depth survey of a subject.
Taking this as inspiration, how can we then use this to create a different sort of panorama in pictures? For me the clue in that last word, 'pictures'. Usually we capture a single moment, attempting to communicate our message in a single image but can we describe everything in a single shot?
Through our TPOTY entries, I've looked for ways to articulate time. My entries for March and April, Vanishing Point and Transport, both explore time as an element but how do you almost solely describe time in a single photo? Maybe this is where our notion of a panorama as a more in depth study can help.
Since moving to Tollesbury, I've photographed the Tollesbury tree on many occasions. I feel like it's my tree. It feels part of my life. I'm sure that just about everyone who walks the sea wall feels like it's their tree too but do we notice it's decay, the passing of the years, sometimes subtle, sometimes more obvious? Such a strong metaphor for the passing of time, the impact on our lives and how so much can pass unnoticed.
Shot in 2013, 2017 and 2021