I am starting to do more panoramic shots now, for experiment, and for learning purposes.

Above is a stitch of roughly 7 images, all shot hand-held. Once you have pictures covering all areas in your scene, just use any stitching tool, such as Photoshop, to either let it automatically stitch for you, or do it manually.

Greatest thing about panoramic shots? Sometimes it gives you a slightly distorted view, which I think is very cool. The second benefit of it is the amount of detail you’d get with the stitched images. Even if there are overlaps between images, the result would still be something way larger than a single shot image.

Judging from the above image, I’d say hand-held pano is doable.

Doing HDR handheld has its benefits, but the definite downside is camera shake and movement. This one looks fine at this size, but you’ll see a very clear blur as the result of camera movement that the subjects shot in all three exposures don’t have the exact match location on the images, and this is something that even Photoshop’s built-in HDR merge function cannot solve.

So, use handheld HDR at your own risk. If you have time and really want a very well-down HDR, tripod is a must, and hopefully the weather cooperates too.

I realized that many people actually prefer HDR art. From my observation, almost all of my most faved artwork on DeviantArt are HDR work. Whilst it’s a good thing knowing that people appreciate my art, it also brings me back to the question: is HDR overused?

Depending on how the artist goes about creating their HDR work, some made their work look unrealistic, and others stick to the traditional HDR post processing. In either case, HDR photos are created to show a lot more detail in both shadow and light areas than one-shot images. Let’s face it: we just don’t have the technology yet to provide such convenience for consumer photographers yet. But as HDR becomes popular among post processors, I think it’s also worth pondering whether HDR post processing is considered original work, or a post processing technique in itself.

Personally, I think HDR is both. The merged image gives you so much more control over your image while retaining a high degree of detail, and the best of it all? Lighting. You gain such a high dynamic range of lighting with HDR that you can post processing it in many ways, and for most of my HDR work, I tend to go a little toward that “unrealistic” retouching realm. I have done it so many times, that I am starting to feel that I have overused the effect too much, and it may very well hinder my personal growth in photography.

Nevertheless, I would recommend all photographers to try out HDR sometime. It’s a wonderful way to give you a whole different outlook toward your photos, and so many more ways to express them in ways you like.

Kubota garden in Seattle.

Having the opportunity to explore more of Seattle, I found Kubota garden, a little Japanese-American style garden that, as we found out, is huge. I have been to several Japanese gardens, but this one trumps them all in size. Granted, the season (winter) isn’t really the flower blooming time, but the garden is nevertheless fascinating, and I am planning on visiting this garden again when spring / summer comes.

The initial inspiration of the “uniformity” series, I captured this image on a day out to the pool. It was a very sunny day, so the water appears extra reflective and fresh.