Saturday 12 December 2009

A flawed sunrise panorama and a puzzle

A Mauna Kea summit panorama taken at sunrise. Click on the picture for a larger image.

I took this sunrise panorama in October but didn't post the picture here because I wasn't happy with it as there were too many things wrong in the final picture. It shows, from left to right, a bit of the Hualalai volcano, the CSO, JCMT and the SMA in the valley and Subaru, the Kecks and the NASA IRTF on the ridge. In the distance you can see both the earth's shadow and the one formed by Mauna Kea.

The panorama consists of three camera positions and at each position I took three shots with different exposures to create three separate "blended" images, one for each position. These three blended pictures were then stitched together in software. Although it's obvious to me, I was the one doing the panning after all, can you figure out if I created the panorama by going from left to right or right to left, and if so, how do you know?

The clue is it's sunrise and the view is to the west!

15 comments:

Aaron Stene said...

Nonetheless, it is still a spectacular photo. I would use it on my blog if it wasn't so wide (I tried reducing and cropping it)

Zuzana said...

I think it is beautiful, you are way too critical of your own work.;)

Zuzana said...

By the way, to reply to your recent comment; yes it is stalks of dry oat that is used for Christmas decoration. They are tied into a big bunch and used to be set out for birds. I find it amazing that the seeds survived this way for a year and are now sprouting. Why now, in the middle of the winter, I have no idea.;)

Rosaria Williams said...

Hi, I found you at The Smitten Image, interested about your blog title. I'm sold.

Big Island Papa said...

Tom,
I have taken several years of photography, and i lived with a father who taught photography for 45 years. This is a spectacular photo...and yeah you may know where the lines are, but the people viewing it do not...that's what counts.

I am looking forward to getting into my photography in this digital age and on the Big Island I have seen plenty of photo opportunities...

Mahalo

Terry

Devany said...

I agree with Aaron. Looks great to me!!!

Tom said...

Thanks everyone! I still don't know, if you look at the picture you can see one or two serious defects, and I see no one has yet answered the puzzle.

Maybe no one cares! No matter, it was a beautiful sunrise.

Lakeviewer - thank you for stopping by and for your kind comment!

Tom

Anonymous said...

right to left?

given away by the way the shadow's don't quite look right on IRTF and Keck ???

- Ant

Tom said...

Ant - no and no! You're on the right track though by thinking about the shadow! I know the shadow looks off on the IRTF and Keck but the single photos at that position confirm that's how it really looked.

Anyway, I've given you a bit of a clue now!

Tom

Big Island Papa said...

Tom,
Are you talking about the rectangle shadow that goes down the slope in the middle of the pictures that is very apparent?

Mahalo

Terry

Tom said...

Terry,

You know what, that isn't apparent to me at all! What you describe though is something you might expect on a panorama, I just can't see it myself - maybe changing the contrast or something would make it obvious to me.

Ant's on the right track. It's the shadow and roughly in the middle of the picture.

I'll answer the puzzle tomorrow evening if no one figures it out. I spent ages trying to fix it but couldn't which is why it's so obvious to me!

Tom

Tom said...

PS. It's not the noisy crap above the Keck dome at the mountain shadow's apex, although I think that gives it away as well - although that would require some real detective work I think!

Anonymous said...

OK - left to right then! :-)

What I think I see now is that the domes in the valley appear to be slightly brighter than those up on the ridge, so that would imply that the Sun was a bit higher in the sky when the left-most image was taken relative to the right-most.

But, it's not that you say... it's in the shadows. Well, the only thing that I can see (perhaps... with a bit of a squint and a ruler) is that the shadow behind Subaru doesn't follow a common line. It looks broken to me, implying two images taken at different times. But that confuses me further as I think that should imply that the images went right-to-left as the shadow appears (to me and my ruler!) higher on the left hand side of the Subaru dome than the right...

Tom said...

You've got it right, Ant, but think about what the sun is doing!

It's sunrise and looking west so as the sun rises the shadow will be getting lower. Mauna Kea's shadow to the left of Subaru is higher than the shadow to the right, therefore the picture/s to the left must have been taken earlier.

Clear as mud, eh? ;)

Good one, Ant, I knew someone would figure it out, but I didn't realise how difficult this was.

I'll have to do another like this soon!

Tom

Anonymous said...

bugger! sunRISE!!!