Thursday, September 14, 2017

Wildlife Panoramas

Though typically done with landscape photography, panoramas can also be used to capture wildlife scenes.  As photographer George Lepp explains, creating wildlife panoramas can be challenging but also very rewarding. 

There are some challenges to taking wildlife panoramas, the biggest one being the fact that the subjects are moving ones as is not usually the case when making landscape panoramas.   However, Lepp also points out many of the advantages of wildlife panoramas if properly done.  With the presence of a large herd or flock of animals, it is often difficult to have all animals properly positioned and unmoving to create a complete, fluent, artistic-looking photograph.  When doing a panorama, a photographer can take several images of smaller portions of the scene and wait for the subjects in a particular shot to position themselves correctly instead of relying on luck for the whole flock or herd to cooperate together.  Additionally, a panoramic view of wildlife allows the entire scene to be properly captured and framed.

Panoramic wildlife shots are also good for either when you are too close or too far away from a subject/subjects to properly frame the shot.  When piecing the photos together, Lepp says that it can sometimes be difficult to piece them together properly with moving subjects.  He suggests that when taking the shots that will be merged into one panorama, you should try to divide up the shots so that animals are not cut in half on the edges of the shot.  If this does not work, he also suggests taking a panorama shot of the same scene after the wildlife have moved.  This way, the background can be properly filled in in the composite.  Lepp adds that sometimes it is okay to remove certain subjects from the scene if the separate shots cannot be properly merged with them present.  However, he does add that while sometimes it is necessary to remove certain subjects from the scene, it is probably never a good idea to add subjects where they weren’t originally.  In the end, though, it is up to every photographer to make their own choice.


Though somewhat challenging, I hope to be able to try my hand at producing my own wildlife panorama as it gives a whole different perspective to wildlife photography.

                                                                       Wide-angle shot

                                                                               VS.
                                                                             Panorama

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