Castor River Panorama

As the Castor River passes through rural southeast Missouri, it carves a series of very small canyons known as "shut-ins". The shut-ins near tiny Fredericktown is a nice place to photograph. Clear cold rushing water, polished granite and towering pine trees give a nature photographer a lot to work with. The shut-ins here have a very cozy feel. Things are on a large scale, but being in the small canyon gives a sense of intimacy. Rather than searching for a grand vista, you are looking at smaller compositions. Panoramas are not the first thing that may come to mind when thinking "small and intimate" however it can be a good technique for fitting more into the frame than your lens will allow.

The top photo was a stitch of 7 images, but it does not have the super-wide panorama feel. I wanted to use the perspective effect of a 50mm lens, but couldn't fit the whole scene in one frame. So I tried digitally stitching 7 vertical frames together to get both the lens perspective that I wanted as well as the broadness of the scene. I could have backed up several yards, but then I would have had to deal with distracting elements in the foreground and background. Panos do not always have to be the grand sweeping vista.





Here is the attempt at the grand sweeping vista. A 180-degree pano. It really distorts the heck out of the river (which runs straight in this section), but I wanted to play around with how much a 16mm lens would distort at the edges as it was panned across a landscape. In photographs without straight lines, it can be tough to detect the distortion. Throw in a road or river or downed log and it becomes pretty apparent.