One of the things I had always meant to try was putting together some of those neat panorama photos that you often see. You know, the ones where you stand in one place and take multiple, overlapping photos of a scene around you. Then you stitch them together in your favourite photo editing software and make one gigantic photo out of each individual photo.
Over time, I had taken a lot of photos with the intention of stitching them together, but I never got around to actually assembling the images until recently. I'll have to dig through my photo archives to see what else I've taken that can be assembled, but here are a few of the recent ones I've done… (click through to view them on Flickr)
Sunset from Cranston
Downtown Calgary
I was downtown recently attending my sister's wedding reception. At the end of the night, as we were heading back to the car, I glanced upwards and saw some cool fog/clouds surrounding The Bow. Naturally, I took the camera out and took a few shots.
Now, with these being night shots, I wasn't terribly happy with the results, as there was a LOT of noise when I went to look at post-processing them. Then I recalled a friend of mine had recommended Bibble Pro 5, as it had a basic version of Noise Ninja integrated with it. Intrigued, I downloaded it, gave it a quick test, and here is the result:
The Bow at Night IMG_1362a
Of course, you can't really tell how the noise reduction performed when the photo is reduced to a web-friendly size, so here's a before and after comparison of a small section (100% crop) of the photo:
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| Before Processing |
After Noise Ninja |
I'm quite impressed with how well it reduced the noise in the photo. With some tweaking to Noise Ninja's settings, I'm sure it could have done even better. To that end, I'm now taking Bibble for a broader test drive to see how well it fits into my overall workflow.
I was working through my photo archives and found several shots of the skies interspersed throughout events like soccer games. I've started to group them into a collection unto themselves. To that end, I've added a few to a set on Flickr and the rest on our own gallery site.
Cloudscape IMG_0863
Welcome to the new site! Or rather, the new look-and-feel of the same site! Due to some accidental work behind-the-scenes, we were forced to upgrade the server software to the latest and greatest versions.
This also marks the end of the WordPress-based online store. We are moving the functionality over to our Gallery online store, so you will still be able to access and shop online for our photos and videos with the same credentials that you had previously.
We're working hard to get the rest of the site working again and even adding a few new features as we go.. Thanks for your patience!
It's been a little bit over a week since this happened and I just wanted to recount a recent experience we had in our neighbourhood.
On the evening of August 3rd, 2010, a recent Coronal Mass Ejection was going to hit the atmosphere. In an attempt to photograph some of the Aurora effects we were expected to see, I hit the road after midnight and headed a little bit south of the city. Unfortunately, nature conspired against this and it remained cloudy through the next hour and a half or so. Of course, it didn't really help that I could still see Calgary's light pollution from where I was. Disappointed that I couldn't get any cool Aurora shots, I headed home.
I got back somewhere between 01:30 and 02:00, realizing that I would be pretty run down for work the next day. As I was getting into bed, I heard these little crackling, popping noises coming from outside and shrugged them off as possibly kids setting off firecrackers or something. Then I heard a really loud BOOM and sat up thinking, "I … don't think that's a firecracker." I went to the windows wondering if I could see anything. Nothing out the front of the house, so I went to the back (looking northward), and saw an incredibly scary sight!
Cranston Fire IMG_0891
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