Waking up in Kobyer...

[fotomachi]

Kobyer is situated in Lori marz, Armenia. It counts a handful of houses and a beautifully situated monastery. A good place to put up a tent, even though the terrain did not really allow it



A 4000px version is on my zenfolio-site. Photographs taken with Nikon D80 and 16-85mm in (obviously) MF mode.

[tobbsman]

Fantastic shot fotomachi !

Just a little critic: the panorama "falls off" a bit to the right. It's not done with a tripod, isn't it ? This happed to me also very often. One starts to shoot left and naturally the arm makes a kind of movement to the down right when you go further to ne next frame. You could easily correct it with horrizontal adjustmant in your stiching software or PSP.


Cheers
Tobias

[LucisPictor]

This is an amazing shot! Looks as if you were camping on the roof of the world. And the light is gorgeous!

[tobbsman]

by the way:
it there little HDR done to it ? I am curious ...


Cheers
Tobias

[Orio]

This must be an amazing region and landscape!
I would be curious to see this same scene but taken normally (with a normal wide angle, without stitching) and without the HDRI elaboration.

[patrickh]

Great pano of a fascinating place. I definitely would not sleep in a tent on a slope like that


patrickh

[fotomachi]

Thank you for the comments. The exposures were made using a tripod in combination with a NN3 panoramic head. The angle of view is ~240°, I didn't capture it in one photo. HDR indeed has been applied to bring detail in the shadow areas, of which there are a lot in this scene. I usually make -2EV, 0EV and +2EV exposures at ISO200 and f/11 for panoramas.
I don't see the panorama falling off to the right? The terrain was absolutely not level and the spot where I put my tent was the only place that was more-or-less flat (but not level, as you can see). Also difficult to see in this panorama, is that about 1m to the right, the hillslope goes down very steeply. I did not sleep very well that night... But it was the only place around, and when I arrived the sun had already set behind the hills and darkness was taking over fast. I had to pitch the tent at any place that looked more or less suitable.

My Kobyer gallery is far from finished, but there are now 3 pictures in its gallery, this panorama included:

http://fotomachi.zenfolio.com/p282230973

The first photo in the gallery was an experiment with a ND10 filter (30 sec exposure). It should give an idea of how the scene looks without HDR being applied. The shadow areas are considerably darker and there certainly is more noise in the shadows (because I had to lighten up somewhat more then generally *healthy*). More photos will follow later, as it indeed was a beautiful location. Especially when the sun was higher and the sun's rays could fully illuminate the hill slopes, the area was, well... But every moment had its specific magic, being it the sun behind the hills, peeping over the hills (like now) or disappearing for the night, and off course the night itself. This was the first panorama from Kobyer I assembled and was instantantaneously reviving the moment - you can imagine what a delightful breakfast I had at this spot...