This is my final piece for my personal project of panoramas and digital editing. My aim was to create a vertical, multiple perspective shot that shows a large portion of the sky as well as a main subject and a cityscape, as this has been a large influence in my work already.

I believe that it has come out successfully, and the cuts and splices are clear and mostly invisible. The sky was really quite easy to melt together and proved to be the most successful part of the image. The cuts were clean and easy, and the fact that the sky was cloudy allowed quite a bit of leeway when blurring different images together. My selection of photographs helped a lot during this stage of the work, as there was a large sample of sky images to choose from. This allowed me to fit one image to the other in order to create the smoothest flow in the picture.

Creating the Shard in the top half was also relatively simple. Due to the simple shape of the building in front and the Shard itself, it was easy to mesh together different pictures to make a smooth section. The Shard itself was made up of 5 different images, which helps to create a natural looking structure. The pockets on the sides frame the building quite nicely, and the diagonal shape of the building in front leads onto the Shard smoothly, and the Shard itself leads into the rest of the picture.

The cityscape itself was the most challenging part of the panorama. The fact that there are many subjects in the city and lots of different parts to this section made it difficult to have smooth cuts. It took 5 or 6 images to make this part of the picture as clean as it is, and I had to use many different tools in Photoshop in order to keep it clean, such as the stamp tool. There were small pockets that required heavy editing, such as around the church. The varying viewing angles made it difficult to have a consistent ground level of the picture, so I relied on editing techniques to mask the fact that there are small fault lines.

I particularly like the flipped image of the Shard in this picture, as it is a bold, clean, intimidating structure that strikes awe in people, whereas the sprawling cityscape that it points to indicates a new kind of intimidating, contrasting between a precise, calculated tower and an unordered, chaotic mass of buildings and girders.

The Shard panorama contact sheet.

Final Piece Statement

My final piece of work will be a split-perspective vertical panorama from and of The Shard in central London. I plan to make a contact sheet of the photos I have taken, as well as make a joiner of the shard itself. Finally, I will be making my panorama. This should take most of the 8 hours time, and I will be splicing in a different sky to change the mood of the image. This piece will tie my project together, using both panoramic pictures and editing techniques I have been working on during my build-up of work to create my final image, whilst also changing from the usual horizontal format of panoramic photography present in work I have taken inspiration from, such as Ansel Adams' pictures.

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Contact sheet for my top of The Shard 'Glass' panorama

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Contact sheet for my Southwark Cathedral panorama

Contact sheet for my Horniman Museum clocktower vertical panorama

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To be edited

Contact sheet of my Horniman Gardens shoot

Contact sheet for my Ocean panorama

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These images are similar to the shots I want to be taking where the sky itself is the main focus. A really dark, brooding atmosphere is going to be a big part of changing the images, and it is skies like these ones that offer the best drastic changes. Replace a cheerful sky in a bright, colourful picture with one of these and it makes quite a difference. These landscapes are a great demonstration of what I'll be looking for in my shots, and I would be very excited to get pictures of this quality of my own to play with.

These are the kinds of photographs that I will be taking inspiration from, where there is a clear line of reflection in the water along a stretched, drawn out background. The sky is a bold colour, making it easier to edit. This isn't necessary, but is very helpful. The top picture is probably more similar to the kind of photos I will be taking, where there is a singular subject in the foreground against a vast landscape in a panoramic fashion. The thirds rule will be important in taking these shots, as will leading lines and cropping. I have to make sure that the pictures aren't so large as to obscure the main focus, but not so small as to create a lacking image.

To be edited