It’s really not too hard!  Hit the jump for the whole walkthrough!

Alright – first, credit where credit is due.  I learned basically everything here from the (often) wonderful Photojojo, so check them out.  so I started with this panorama from a couple posts back.  It had a few good things going on:

1. It’s a panorama.
2. Both the sky and the foreground have little going on.  I’ll say right here that the sky is most important – there was a dock in the foreground that I wish wasn’t there, but you can get around it.
3. They had a horizon line which was about even on both the right and left.

There were a few small problems though, and first thing is sorting them out:

1. Things weren’t perfectly level.  There are plenty of ways to do it, but what you’re shooting for are features that are the same height where they touch the right and left edges of your image.  One way to sort this out is to use the grid (View -> Show -> Grid in Photoshop) to see how far off you are, and then Edit -> Free Transform or Edit -> Transform -> Rotate to make it so the right and left sides are even.  After that crop your rectangle.
2. Things were darker on one side than the other.  This can be sort of subtle in the original panorama, but since in our new planet the edges are going to touch, you need to sort this out.  There are also plenty of techniques to do this but what I did was us an curves adjustment layer to lighten up the dark bits, then use a gradient set to lighten over the top to apply it to the left side more than the right.  This doesn’t have to be exact.  It should be, but hey – I didn’t get it right, so good enough!  On to the actual steps:

Once you have your panorama with even edges, left and right brightness roughly the same, and a plain fore and background, you’re ready to go!

1. Turn it into a square.  Do Image -> Image Size and uncheck the Constrain Proportions box.  Now you can resize (and stretch) your rectangle into a square.  Make your height equal to whatever your width is and hit ok.
2. Flip it over.  This is kinda weird, but unless you want an inside out planet, you need to start with things upside down.  Hit Image -> Image Rotation -> 180º.
3. Make the magic happen.  Select Filter -> Distort -> Polar Coordinates, then select Rectangular to Polar and hit ok.
   
4. Magic, eh?  Last little tweaking step.  Most images have a part that is more interesting than others.  I like to throw that at the top.  In this case, I liked the buildings as they stand out from the trees.  I used Edit -> Free Transform and rotated, then cropped the image to the way you see it here.

Pretty good, eh?  I really like how this looks with a gray sky and water in the foreground but it would be interesting to see what other subjects could be used.  Maybe something with a big chunk of blacktop in the front?  a bunch of desert sand?  I’ve been watching for the right place to shoot something I could use for this for probably 6 months.  Keep your eyes peeled too.

Make Your Own Planet is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I was pretty pleased, reviewing on the camera.  Pleased enough that I forgot about the downsides.  Doing things in the dark is just difficult.  I generally like shooting things a bit farther away, because it’s really hard to tell what is and isn’t in focus.  If you have more distance between your camera and the beginning of your subject, it’s easier to get enough depth of field to get them all sharper.  I did bring along a flashlight to check focus up close, but… it becomes a pain.  I also stepped in a lot of goose shit.  That’s just how it is.  This being Greenlake, I wasn’t even worried about getting mugged for my backpack full of camera lenses.  All was good, right?

Well… yes until I got home and saw a line of blue across all my shots:

All.  The.  Way.  Across.

You don’t see it in the panorama above because they have all been laboriously removed in Photoshop.  After I found the problem, I immediately shot a few more pictures with other lenses, batteries, whatever – I wasn’t happy about this.  They’re all the same, including with the lens cap on.  Any aperture, ISO speed, whatever.  I did some research.

If you want to get technical, this is called a stuck pixel or maybe a whole row of them.  It is slightly different from a hot pixel, which would be white all the time.  All that matters is it is going to ruin my pictures.  The internet is rife with folk remedies about taking off your lens, setting your camera to manual cleaning mode (where the mirror flips up) for a few minutes and then turning it off and reattaching your lens.  Maybe it works for some people, but it didn’t do anything for me.

Since hot or stuck pixels (at least a couple of them) are nothing new, there are some other options out there.  Some cameras have options to use a dark frame (basically a picture taken with the lens cap on which should contain light only on the problem pixels) to cancel out the noise in the good frames.  The theory is that since the bad pixels are always in the same place, you can map them and work around them.  I’ve yet to find any software that works correctly with my camera and since I’m a few weeks past the grace period on Canon’s warranty, I’m still unsure what happens next.  I see a lot of healing brush in my future!

Night Panorama – The Revenge of the Stuck Pixel is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Taken in a Safeway parking lot.  Taken at night, without any real attempt to stabilize the camera, hand holding my S90, at only ISO400.  I could have set the camera on the wall.  I could have cranked up the ISO (although I didn’t want it any noisier than this).  That isn’t the point.  It took it, I bought some groceries, and looking at it later, I liked it.  Shooting up into the trees means that the cars and other distractions are gone.  The floodlights from the lot wash out all the detail (and me playing with the contrast burns some more) leaving just shapes and sky.  I didn’t intend it to be exactly this shot – I didn’t really intend it to be anything.  I’m just happy with what it is.

My Favorite Mistakes is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I also did a little more processing on this one.  Instead of leaving it at defaults, I did some contrast correction and resized the photos down a bit since they get resized so much in the end anyway.

One last word about taking stills for a time lapse at night.  During the day my battery was lasting for hundreds of shots with no problem.  In this sequence, I only got just over 200 before it died since the night shots had shutter speeds of 30+ seconds.  If I was going to do it again, I’d crank open the aperture a bit more to make the shots a bit shorter and get more life out of the battery.

UPDATE: For another more recent time-lapse attempt, see me building my fence.

Second Attempt At TimeLapse is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

At first it seemed like everything was still.  I can’t say quiet, as you might notice the blur of a freight train through the bottom of the frame.  With a wide field of view, this also happens to cross the approach path for Seatac Airport.  I love the morse-code of dots and dashes the planes make through my frame and set the exposure up to 13 seconds to record it.  The foreground sculpture is called Eagle and was created by Alexander Calder in 1971.  It is the most recognizable piece of the Olympic Sculpture Park (or “the sculpture garden”, as most people would call it) and I was really happy to capture this shot of it with the most recognizable Seattle landmark in the background.

Seattle Comes Alive At Night is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

As far as I’m concerned, the globe is the best thing about the paper.  I’ve always loved driving by and watching “It’s In The PI ***” as it rotates past.  Unfortunately, rumors are that the PI will stop publishing soon.  The exact date is unknown (as they’d rather not have the staff pick up and leave with a few issues left to print) but all the final pictures have been taken, so I went down to Myrtle Edwards Park last night (the only spot where you can get a good shot of the globe without access to a high-rise) to take some pictures before the globe stops spinning.

I don’t know what will happen to this Seattle landmark.  The last time it was turned off for an extended amount of time (in the 50′s to save energy), it almost shook itself to pieces when they tried to start it back up.  Whatever happens to the paper, I hope the globe lives on.  It’s been a piece of Seattle far longer than I have and it would be a shame to see it go.

Before The Globe Stops Spinning is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Open Flame on Koh Tao is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

• ApertureValue: f/4
• DateTimeOriginal: 2007:12:01 19:45:20
• ExposureTime: 1/5 sec
• Flash: No Flash
• FocalLength: 40 mm
• ISOSpeedRatings: 400
• Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Colorado Fireworks is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

• ApertureValue: f/4
• DateTimeOriginal: 2008:12:22 21:09:21
• ExposureTime: 20 sec
• Flash: No Flash
• FocalLength: 24 mm
• ISOSpeedRatings: 100
• Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Night Snow and Photoshop is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

• ApertureValue: f/22
• DateTimeOriginal: 2008:12:22 21:15:07
• ExposureTime: 20 sec
• Flash: No Flash
• FocalLength: 24 mm
• ISOSpeedRatings: 100
• Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Snowy Seattle Night is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures