Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-19/Featured content

Panoramas with Farwestern and a good week for featured content

A 360-degree panorama of the crater of Mount St. Helens, photographed by Farwestern, who gives us background information and suggestions on the art and technique of the panorama

This week, The Signpost interviews Farwestern, who has contributed numerous panoramas to the project (many of them featured pictures). He gives some background information on his new featured picture (above), and shares his favourite panoramas and his tips for those who wish to make better panoramas.

The new featured picture: This new featured picture was the best shot from three climbs of the mountain. I tried earlier in August 2009 and made the summit but the conditions were very smoggy due to a wildfire in north eastern Oregon. In this October attempt, conditions were just perfect (and that doesn't happen very often in Washington State): right after a snowstorm and with a temperature of 24 °F (−4 °C). A subsequent attempt yielded footage that didn't have the "wow" factor that this one did. So, you see, the physical energy, time, and effort expended was truly only something that a dedicated artist might expend a few times in a lifetime.

The mountain has a special place in my family's story. My father was once a mountain climber and journalist for the Tacoma News Tribune. He climbed the mountain both before and after the explosion. In 1980 he rode with President Carter and select members of the press, via helicopter, to survey the site to educate the president about the disaster. My father considers his coverage of the event to be the highlight of his career, and my brother and I grew up exploring the wilderness around the mountain and grew to love and respect it.

Favourite panoramas: It's hard for me to choose a single favorite. I aspire to communicate the essence of a place as holistically as possible, and that inspired me towards capturing everything; in the form of many 360-degree panoramas, which are like virtual worlds and capture a special time and place in a way that really wasn't possible before recent technology. However, if I had to choose only four images it would be the new featured picture, this one of Mount Ellinor, and two on my own site: Hurricane Ridge covered in snow and El Capitan at night. I'm working on a project to create an interactive experience that captures many of the highlights of the western United States. A lot of these images aren't yet published on Wikipedia, but they will be soon.

Creating panoramas: My suggestions for those interested in capturing panoramas are threefold:

1. I spend huge amounts of time studying topographical maps of various outdoor areas. When I have a good understanding of the geography then I can usually predict places that will yield good results. You can usually tell where sunsets will look best by looking at where the sun will be relative to the environment. Then you can plan adventures around ideal setups. There is always that random-inspiration factor that sometimes happens but I find I am more "lucky" when I plan or do research about the place before going.
2. Worry less about the camera and more about composition. Panoramas are a different art because the idea is to capture as much as possible in a creative, beautiful way. Anyone can find a single, beautiful angle in almost any place, but imagine how hard it must be to take an ordinary place and make everything there interesting or beautiful. The classic tricks apply, like framing, rule-of-thirds, lines, contrast, but some new ones also, like how to get the sun in the shot without flare (by stitching two photos together: one with the sun blocked, and one without, so the top-half can be inserted over the non-flaired bottom).
3. Go places that other people aren't going. This is probably the biggest thing I try to do. A lot of the art is in getting to, and returning safely from distant, remote places. Images that offer something new are interesting. You can change a perspective by showing a common thing at night, or from a strange projection.