Reflecting upon my work and things I'd change.

So after completing my work, which includes the blog - research, ideas, and log - and also the products (three panoramas), I decided to look back over it and comment on things such as mistakes, improvements and what I would have done differently if given the chance.

So firstly, I am very pleased with how my research went. I covered various things (and hopefully what was required after reading the brief) such as Panoramas, QTVRs and Photographers as well as some history of the subject. I also think my choice of theme was good, using a low point for my first panorama and so on.

However, my main problem which lets down my work is the lighting. I decided to take the images in the evening (a very, very bad idea if I may add and I HIGHLY recommend not doing this for future projects similar to this). I originally thought having a nice setting would add some form of atmosphere, which is of course now ruined due to the lighting differences.

The pictures with the sun in them seemed to be very dark, again due to the sun rendering everything else a lot darker. So when blending, the difference in lighting was quite easily noticeable and this is called 'banding'. Of course there are many techniques possible to change the lighting, though not all of them worked and changing the lighting too much makes the images seem very unnatural (in terms of lighting anyway).

But you must also note it could be a number of problems to why I had these issues. For example I was using a fairly shoddy Tripod and the camera may have a few problems when directly aimed at the sun. But thinking back to my pictures I now realize I should have not started taking the pictures while facing the sun. It means I have two ends with the sun in it (start and finish) and as a result two areas with lighting problems rather than the possible one area.

But in having these problems I learned a lot about altering lighting in images as well as being precise and accurate while paying attention to small details. There were also various other methods of changing lighting, which I learned from friends and research other than doing it manually but this would be cheating and really I never cheat (this may sound somewhat sarcastic but I assure you it's not meant to be!).

So overall, I am pleased with the methods I learned and used. But if given the chance or even if we were given a later deadline I would have taken my pictures again when the sun isn't so low in the sky.