“Buena vista panorama!!”

Once upon a time – I think this was in the mid-1970’s – my Grandma Betty and my Aunt Elaine took a trip through Europe.  They visited England, Spain, Greece, Italy and a few other countries.

One of the stories my Grandma Betty told me about the trip was during their visit to Italy, they were on a tour bus with a tour guide who spoke very little English.  About the only thing they remember about the Italian tour was that, every so often, the tour guide would point to some beautiful view and exclaim, “Buena vista panorama!!”  Which I guess means, “Look at the beautiful view.”  All through the entire Italian trip, it was “buena vista panorama!” this and “buena vista panorama!!” that.

Now we flash-forward from the 1970’s to last Sunday afternoon.  For me, it’s another photography road trip to the North Country.  bAnother shot of the beautiful flowing cascades and creeks and waterfalls of the Adirondacks, this time a shot of the spillway near a Corinth reservoir.

Oh yeah, I got the picture. Of course I did.

And it’s a re-appreciation of the panoramas I’ve taken when I first began experimenting with digital photography.

Background.

Panoramas are beautiful wide-angle shots that have been part of photography for over a century. Back in the early 1900’s, Kodak manufactured a series of “Panoram” cameras; over the years, there have been such panoramic cameras as the Horizont, the Globuscope, and the Viewlux.

But if you don’t have a panoramic camera, you can take a series of pictures and stitch them together with a software program called autostitch.de.  That program takes your various photographs and glues them together into a panoramic shot.

From there, you can take the pictures and use other software programs to create a polar panorama – the “little planet” photos – or you can have a print shop make an ultra-wide print and then you can frame it.

Unfortunately for me, although stitched panoramic photos are beautiful and striking, they’re pretty much against the rules in most of my photo competitions.  About the only ones that will accept stitched panoramic photos, to my knowledge, are the Durham Fair and Altamont.

Still, that doesn’t stop me from taking these pictures and stitching them together as their own complete image.  Besides, the other panoramic cameras are either too expensive (a second-hand Globuscope can run upwards of $1,200), or they’re built for obsolete film sizes (I would have to modify one of the old Kodak Panorams to take a size other than “105” film).

The method I currently use – placing an ultrawide lens on my camera, putting the camera on a tripod, and then rotating the tripod at various increments and shots – has worked for me in the past. And I could still enter my photos in competitions like Altamont – certainly “Waterwish 3” would look good in that show, don’t you think?

And this morning, as I thought about the panoramic pictures I’ve captured over the years, I wondered how my Grandma Betty would have appreciated these images.  Truly I’ve captured a few buena vista panoramas in my time.

Yeah.  So now you know that Waterwish 3 is positioned for Altamont.  One of my four entries for the summer photo competition.

And even if I can’t enter all my super-ultra-mega-wideangle compositions in shows this year…

That doesn’t mean I can’t create more panoramas in the future.  In fact, if you’d like to see a small gallery of the panoramic shots I’ve taken over the years, please visit my flickr site and check out the album of panoramas.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy those buena vista panoramas on a dreary Monday morning.

Or at any time.