There are few technicalities involved in capturing panoramic images. Here are five tips you need to know before you head out on your next shoot.
Let’s widen things up a bit. Panoramic photography is one of the strangest and most difficult forms of photography out there. Are you shooting film or digital? Are you shooting a person, a building, or a landscape? Whatever the shoot, there are a few factors that can always make the process more difficult.
After going out on a few panorama-focused shoots, I compiled a brief list of a few different things to consider before going out on a shoot yourself.
1. Filling out the Composition
Panoramic photography is not so much what you’re seeing but how you’re seeing it. That just means that a panoramic photograph doesn’t just have to be a wide view of something. You can have a fisheye lens and see the entire length of a mountainside, but that doesn’t mean it’s a panoramic photo. A loose definition of the technique is that the image’s aspect ratio needs to have a width at least twice as long as its height.
When you’re composing a panoramic shot, you should still consider the rule of thirds (breaking your image up into thirds), but the one aspect that changes are the leading lines. Think about what the subject is and how people will actually see it when they look at your photo. A good way to guide viewers’ eyes in a natural, seamless way is to give them direction through objects in the frame. For example, if the photo is on a street, let the sidewalk, building textures, or cars lead the direction of the image to the subject.
It’s also important to consider the negative space in the frame. If the subject is on the far left side of the frame, try to fill the negative space with unimportant information. You don’t want to complicate the image with too many important things to look at.
2. Turn Off Auto Focus
If you take anything away from this article, let it be this: turn off auto focus when you take panoramic photos.
Now, first let’s talk about how to take panoramas with your digital camera. Use portrait orientation and take multiple photos as you pan across your subject. Make sure each photo overlaps with the previous one by at least 20 percent — your photo-editing app will need that space to stitch the images together properly. Then you’re done.
Now back to focusing. While you take multiple photos, it’s important to keep the auto focus off because you don’t want to accidentally get different focal points in the middle of your panorama. For example, if you’re taking a panorama of a building and that building would be the center of the frame, there might be a tree in front of the building. If your camera is focused to infinity for every picture except the frame with the tree (it’s focused on the tree) the panorama will end up with a different focal plane in the middle of the shot.
Always use manual focus.
3. How to: Street vs. Landscape
This isn’t a discussion about which is better. It’s more about how you should approach the two shots in different ways. Landscape photography is best with a tripod. You have more time and can be more thoughtful with exposure — and you can slow the shutter down. Street photography is much more difficult. Unless you have a film camera that can take a panoramic shot with one frame, you’ll need to always take multiple frames, meaning if things are moving in front of you, they could end up in multiple frames. For example, if a person is walking from the left side of the frame to the right, there’s a chance that person could be in all three of your shots. So for street photography I’d recommend a wide lens, and only taking 2-3 shots with a fast shutter to reduce the risk of cars and people ruining your shot.
If you’re shooting landscape panoramas, you can use a ball head or even a pano head that allows you to keep the lens right on top of the rotation axis so you can avoid a shift in perspective. But, if you’re just starting out, I’d recommend just sticking with a tripod. That being said, one of the single most important things to consider about using a tripod is the shutter capability. Yes you can take long exposures, but it’s important to note that if you’re shooting at golden hour or blue hour — any time when the light is changing — make sure you reduce the length of your exposure because once you get to your last shot, the light could have changed too much and make the photo a nightmare to edit in post-production. If you’re taking 5-10 second exposures, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about as it shouldn’t change too much. Just be mindful of the light.
4. Cropping Existing Images
This might sound like a cop out, but if you’re just getting into panoramas, take a long look at your current portfolio. Find any image that calls to you, and crop it down to a panoramic aspect ratio (something like 3:1 or 4:1). I have found this gives me ideas and inspiration for the type of photo I want to go take or add to my portfolio. Also, you can even find that some pictures take on a whole new meaning when you crop them down. I recently did this with a shot I took from the desert this past spring and it made me see the photo in a completely different way.
Once you have cropped your existing photo, theres always the option of posting it online to Instagram, so let’s take a look at how you can edit the panoramas and then publish them.
5. Stitching and Uploading
Once you’ve taken your photos that you plan to put together for a panorama, it’s time to start the post-production process. If you’re uploading your images into Lightroom, the workflow is simple, highlight the photos then go to Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama. From here, you can crop, edit and start finalizing the image however you’d like.
If you’re in Photoshop, highlight your pano shots in the desktop folder (not in Photoshop yet) and right-click and select “Open with Photoshop.” Once you’ve done this, highlight every shot and then click the box in the top left next to “Film Strip” and select “Merge to Panorama.” From here, just like Lightroom, you can edit, crop, tweak however you see fit.
Now once you have your final panoramic photograph, you can split the image up and upload it to Instagram creating a seamless swipe that lets your followers view the photo in all its glory. To do this, bring your image into Photoshop. Use the Slice Tool and highlight the whole image. Next you’re going to right-click on the blue box in the top left corner and select “Divide Slice” then “Divide Vertically.” This will allow you to choose how many photos you want. Next, go to File > Export > Save for Web, and then you’ll be able to save each photo wherever you want.
Just remember, there are no right or wrong ways to approach photography. Shoot whatever you want, however you want, and just have fun!
Interested in the tracks we used to make this video?
- “Used to It” by Luciano Music Co
- “2 in the Morning” by NEURON
- “Lo Fi Beach Down” by Trending Music
- “Return to Joy” by Symphonic Collective
- “Cartel Moves” by Joseph
- “Titans” by Sound Force
- “Bossa Nova Trap Groove” by Mattijs Muller
Looking for more photography tips and tricks? Check these out.
- 4 Landscape Photography Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid
- Focus Stacking 101: Time to Open Your Aperture All The Way
- DIY Filmmaking: 7 New Hacks to Help Your Shots — and Sanity
- 6 Cheap Ways to Light Your Next Portrait Photography Shoot
- Black and White Photography: Understanding Shadows and Color
