A couple of additions

[mathrafal]

And it's good morning from him!

In keeping with Ondrej's last thread, here are a couple of hors d'ouvres that might or might not be of interest. I am going to suggest that people might not be willing to post when only a couple of all those who look at the panoramas posted here can be bothered to give any feedback.

Anyway, I should think people are sick of my Røros 360 tour by now. I know I am, but these two panos were taken in between thunderstorms yesterday at an attractive waterfall called Eafossen, some 100 km away from my home town.

They are moody, and I think I overcooked them to try and bring that out. One from human height and another from on top of a Pole called Wojtek (sorry, bad humour but I thought it was funny). Not the most amazing images ever, but I was more scared of getting a good soaking from either the river or the clouds, so apologies there.

This has been a damp summer up until now, and the snow is still melting off the mountaintops. Thus, this particular waterfall is somewhat tempestuous.

http://roros360.com/panos/1112/index.html

http://roros360.com/panos/1113/index.html

These are just the pages that link into the iframe on http://roros360.com/

I've added quite a few new panoramas of late, as well as a few gigapixel images. If anyone is interested, they can be seen on the main map under Nytt (or Recently added) on the English page.

Sadly, and this is a hint for Trausti, the big images are done with Zoomify and/or Pano2vr. I could really do with a multi-resolution solution for FFC . . . I wonder if I am alone with that?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them

Jon

[ondrat]

Hi Jon, you've got the point! It is a shame that people are not willing to write a few words to give you any feedback or perhaps just let you know they saw what you 'bother' to share with them. Look for example at your thread "New virtual tour" ... excellent inspiring project larger than anything I've ever seen ... 258 views, 2 reactions ... very sad

Anyway back to the topic. It is awesome location, no doubt about that, but I think you are right ... images are bit overcooked. There is too much nasty HDR grey to my taste. On the other hand considering weather conditions I am not sure if you could get more out of it...

[mathrafal]

Yes. I am going to have a play with those some more tomorrow.

Jon

[mathrafal]

Hei Ondrej!

And I have. I think the problem was that I was a little tired of not trying something artistic, so I microwaved and then grilled the images before sautéing them and then serving them up.

I would be interested in your opinion of them, now that the skies have lightened a little.

It was a very dark day; today the sun is shining and Norway is doing what it does best, which is sitting in the sun, pretending that work can wait until tomorrow Sadly, with the cost of fuel, greenhouse emissions and all that, I decided not to make the journey, since it is over 100 km and people may as well see the wet side as well as the dry side of the country.

I have taken two more of some of the pastureland and the most northerly desert in Europe today. I'll serve those up tomorrow, when I have a free few minutes!

Jon

[ondrat]

Ohh, definitelly heaps better than first version, well done. I can see what damn dark day it was and there is no doubt blue sky with lots of sunshine would give completelly different result...

Looking forward to see panos from pastureland and desert

[Morten]

Hey Jon,

It is hard to make a dull grey day look anything but a dull grey day. I think you have given these images a subtle and appropriate bit of punch. Of course, a way around this is to wait for the magic of twilight or here in Oz, it usually means to just wait a day and you are bound to get beautiful blue skies.

I do prefer your second image for its location. With the first, I just don't feel like I am close enough to anything. I want to be nearer the water, or the cottage or something.

Thanks for sharing,

Morten

[mathrafal]

G'day Morten,

Thanks for the response. It was an absolute disaster and, although the idea of waiting for the twilight is a good one, you forget that there is no twilight this time of year (to speak of) . . . Nor is there guaranteed good weather, since it changes so quickly.

You will see that in the following four, two of which I have mentioned above and two more I have added just for fun and to keep these forum pages a little livlier than they have been in recent weeks.

http://roros360.com/panos/112/index.html - a view that says everything about why I live in Norway. William Blake mentions the "green and pleasant land" in Jerusalem, but I think the same could be said of Norway. Once the white shit has gone, there is some remarkable countryside. This looks over towards Hummelfjell, which comes in at a mere 1543 metres, but which I suppose is quite high (we have one down the road, which I shall climb this summer and photograph that is a little higher at 1666 m). These are very old mountains, evinced by their shapes: you will probably be more used to the young whippersnapper mountains of Vestland, I suppose! Please ignore the sky in this one, since it is crap, but the countryside makes up for any poor post processing on my part . . .

http://roros360.com/panos/113/index.html - This one is quite fun! The white sand is appropriately named Kvitsanda, and is Europe's most northerly natural desert. Again, a nice day, but with shifting clouds that made getting a good sky difficult.

http://roros360.com/panos/115/index.html - Two images taken at Jutulhogget, some 50 km south of my home and the site of North Europe's longest canyon. Measuring in at 2,4 km, which I know is nowhere near the scale of the Gorges du Tarn, it's all we really have and, had it not been for that bloody sun going in just as I took the first, I might have had a couple of good images. Nevertheless, I went ahead in the hope that a little fake HDR work might do the job.

I think that there is a curse on me, since every time I go out and spent my time setting up poles and robot heads, etc., the sun decides to take a break. It is only whenever I am 5 or so km from home that it reappears. I wonder if this is just me, though; perhaps others have sense enough not to post when they have experienced something similar!

Jon

[Morten]

G'day Jon,

Would you believe I am often waiting for some clouds to make the sky more interesting here. We can go for weeks without seeing them and months without any rain. Right now we are having some major storms (start of winter) which prevents any outdoor activities for a few days.

I like the panos and the skies and clouds look fine to me. My only thought is that the images look a little too bright on my monitors. Taking a bit of brightness out will of course help saturate the greens of the grass and the blue of the sky. It may be that I am due to calibrate.

Thanks for sharing and keeping things ticking over.

Morten

[mathrafal]

Heisann Morten!

Yes, clouds do make for a more interesting sky, but when it is just cloud cover and nothing else, one has to start messing around with Shadows / Highlights in Photoshop to try to get something more interesting, or, as in a couple of cases, take the sky out altogether and add a different one. Since I live with the trolls (not internet trolls, but they are never far away) and wander around Østerdalen singing Grieg hits, especially when I summon the energy that remains after 50 years on this earth, I go up the occasional mountain just to take a couple of sky shots. They are quite useful, although it takes a hell of a lot of buggering around to get the sun (or the sun behind the cloud) in the right position, as well as a massive amount of work making sure that none of the old sky remains. There is a website that actually sells skies for panorama photographers, but they are always jpegs and never big enough. Perhaps we should start a "Skies" forum and all add 16-bit tiffs for each other to use.

Trausti? Any thoughts on this? It would be a valuable resource and something I would be happy to add to.

I would have thought that in Oz, with so much of the country being as flat as a cricket pitch (forget Meryl Streep, Ayres Rock and her amazing Ozzie accent in that film "A dingo et mai baibee"), there could be plenty of stock imaging to have!

The problem, however, being serious, is that blue skies (shinin' on me, nothin' but... - sorry, I AM being serious) are such buggers to get clean and I often prefer some cloud cover if for no other reason than not to have to use so much noise reduction on adjustment layers. Bearing in mind that I fake a lot of HDR through differently exposed RAW files (I blame wind for that), I get noisier skies than I would otherwise have liked.

The solution is often to make the HDR image and then transplant the sky from the "middle" exposure and use that. It makes the workflow ridiculously massive and causes me everything from panic attacks to the knowledge that I should not be allowed a camera, even for photographing my 17 grandchildren and 29 great grandchildren, all of whom are typical Norwegian kiddies - blond hair, blue eyes and who go through the chrysalis stage from the age of 10 until they are 25, after which they come out with hairy legs, brown eyes and black hair!

Any help in solving the problem of Blue Skies (Shinin' on me) would be of great benefit to not only me, but a host of others as well!

Thoughts, folkets?

Jon

[ondrat]

Well, Jon, I am sorry to say I won't be in agreement with you on this. I am on the opinion that photographers should not change the reality by adding/removing anything from the scene. Talking about spherical photos retouching photo equipment is ok same as retouching moving people who could not be stich properly. Removing/adding major part of the image, not talking about sky which is basically half of the photo, is against my photographic ethics and I think I should not be done.

I agree it is hard to get some colours from photo taken in overcast weather. But if overcast on that place is reality for 300 days a year you just present it in the most common conditions and I think its nothing wrong on that. Moreover I can't see the point to adding blue sky as it does not make any change to dull colours on the landscape. So I doubt blue sky actually make any good to the photo with dull colours. Considering huge amount of time spent on postprocessing I think its better to wait for nice sunny day and present the location in real conditions. I wouldn't like at all to see beautiful Norwegian landscape with patched Australian sky ... with all the respect to you this is a big no no for me.

Regards
Ondrej

[mathrafal]

Well, in many respects, I am in complete agreement, but, sadly, my customers would hasten to differ.

Jon