And this, too, shall pass away.

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#1

ackersdijkseweg__
ackersdijkseweg__2560×1475 1.17 MB

While cycling to a planned photo shoot I looked over my shoulder and saw this.

I immediately liked the softness of this fogged over, cold, early morning scene with Vega and a slice of the moon still visible through the approaching clouds. Grabbed my camera, switched lenses and took a 4 shot, handheld panorama.

Turned out that I only needed to do a minimal amount of editing. I did remove a few lights that bothered me, though.

I’m rather happy how this spur-of-the-moment shot turned out.

Camera: Nikon Z6ii
Lens: AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4G
Stitching + Aligning: Hugin
Editor: RawTherapee
Border: ImageMagick
Location: Ackerdijkseweg, between Delft and Rotterdam (on OpenStreetMap)

This work by Jacques Dekker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

22 Likes
#2

I love the unplanned “bonus” shot. This one is really nice, it looks just a gradient of color until you really zoom into it and then the tree line and the fog reveal themselves. The colors are soft and subtle. You should print this one. It’d look great on the wall.

#3

Yeah, the planned shoot went rather well but these shots are indeed a very nice bonus. I do make sure I have a bigger chance of running into these by walking/cycling the scenic routes if at all possible and by keeping my eyes open.

Scenes like this don’t come around that much and are gone before you know it.

That’s one of the reasons I decided to make this a 4 shot panorama just in case. Original format is 10960x5900: Gives me a bit more detail to enjoy…

4 Likes
#4

This is definitely one of these pictures that require a tremendous print size. It loses a bit on all my screens as they are all way too small. Fantastic shot!

#5

Beautiful shot @Jade_NL … And that too with handheld camera!!

For such wide canvas at such times of the day when the natural variation of light across the frame is wide, I have often struggled to keep exposure values reasonably matching before presenting to Hugin – you get such short time to do everything. But you have managed that very nicely indeed.

BTW, is it Vega or Venus? I think the latter. Mars would also be close by below it but would have been faintly visible through a longer exposure about 20 to 30 mins before this time.

#6

This turns out to be one of the nice things about my Z6ii: Easier to dip into the lower exposure speeds (compared to my D750). A tripod is still better, though…

If I shoot panoramas from a tripod and have enough time I determine which, fixed white balance to use for all the shots. Doing this gives you a easier starting point later on. I didn’t have time to figure that out in this specific case so I ended up using the white balance from the second image and copy-pasted that one to the other three in RawTherapee before exporting as TIFFs to feed Hugin.

I shoot manual 99% of the time, so that part is just knowing which part, in this case the sky, to use to dial in the settings.

You’re probably right about that. Vega is situated higher in the sky at that date/time:

vega.venus.moon
vega.venus.moon2560×1440 656 KB

#7

This is a beautiful picture; I like the serenity of it very much.
I am sure it will look fantastic in print; maybe it would be worth trying an even wider aspect ratio. Thank you for posting!

#8

Currently it has a 2:1 ratio with at its base a harmonic mean guide, which I find to have a rather pleasing symmetry when cropping and positioning that crop.

I did start out with a favourite ratio of mine, even though it is one mainly used in the Film Industry: 2.35:1 (“wide screen”). I couldn’t really get that to work; Venus would not be in the shot without the proportions bottom-middle-top looking somewhat awkward and the clouds wouldn’t be as prominent. I should have made a fifth shot to be honest.

So, I do agree with you that a wider end-result would be even nicer. Lets say that it is the result of a spur-of-the-moment shot…

Anyway: Thanks for you comment, it’ll trigger me to be even more attentive of the situation the next time something like this comes around!

#9

2.35:1 would have been my first try, as well :slight_smile:
But you are totally right: keeping the proportions and Venus in harmony would be a headache in even wider aspect ratio.
This picture is gorgeous as it is, and even more special, since you were on the way to somewhere else (personally, I find it really hard to get “in the zone” when I am on my way to somewhere else) - so don’t worry about not being attentive enough - I probably would’ve missed it altogether :wink:

#10

Que c’est beau, bravo