Here's my favorite shot from the Mt. Rainier Aperture Nature Photography Workshop - organized by my friend Scott Bourne. I really wanted to shoot a series of 15 photos (3 exposures each of 5 views of the scene), but we only had 5 minutes at the location. No time to set up my trusty tripod.

I still got my pano . . . by shooting wide and cropping off the top and bottom of the frame in Photoshop.

Some ideas on this technique:

- Use the widest lens you have.

- Shoot RAW for the maximum image quality.

- Frame your scene with a pretty darn good idea of how you will crop your image.

- Make sure the horizon line is level.

This is a low-res image posted on a blog – so the color, brightness and sharpness is certainly not ideal. However, if you click on the image and zoom in, you may see nature photographer (and heck of a nice guy) Juan Pons down below. In my original, I will clone him out. Until then, check out his excellent work.

Explore the Light,

Rick

P.S. I boosted the color in this image with Topaz Adjust. Info on Topaz and other plug-ins @ the Plug-in Experience.