The 2011 Epson International Pano Awards

[Bmachine]

The 2011 Epson International Pano Awards

by Bmachine » Wed May 18, 2011 7:34 pm

Hello esteemed APP community.

I don't know if you are aware of this photo contest but I think Autopano is one of the sponsors.
http://www.thepanoawards.com/

Anyway, a few months ago, a friend of mine told me about it and suggested I entered. I looked at the previous year's entries and thought "Wow, the standard is really high here. If I want any chance at this, I should go for something different." I had been exploring the concept of storytelling on panorama and I had shot a number of them. One of them was a shot of world champion surfer Kelly Slater as he found out he had won the California contest for the Surfing world championship at Trestles beach. I had been preparing a shot that I wanted to try and get and had practiced (as much as possible in the unpredictable conditions of a surf contest) and tried to guess where he would come in to the beach IF and when he actually won.

Usually there is a mob of people swarming around the winner. But Trestles is a rocky beach and it is difficult to walk on these stones so I knew that most people would not go into the water. I figure if I can survive a few cuts to my feet I would get a unique vantage point. This was a long shot because, unlike a landscape, anything that includes human, especially when you can't control them, becomes much more complicated if you try to do a pano. Anyway I moved around as quickly as I could and was fortunate enough to get some good shots done. After MANY hours of cleanup and assembly I got the pano done and I sent it to the contest two months ago.

I really did not think much about it because this was not a "traditional" pano and the level of the competition was really high. So by now, I had pretty much forgotten about the whole thing. And then last night I received this email:

----------------------
Dear Bo,
Congratulations!! You have placed first in the 2011 Amateur competition, Built Environment category with your image of Kelly Slater.
This year we received 3474 entries from 952 photographers in 62 countries, so you should be very proud of this achievement.
The top 50 images in each category will very soon be published on the website.
We will soon be in touch again to ask you to provide a high resolution file of your winning image for the exhibition in Sydney.
Congratulations once more, and we will contact you again very shortly.
Kind regards,
David Evans
Curator
----------------------

I have to admit that this took me completely by surprise!

Anyway, the reason I mention this is not to toot my own horn, but to say that I assembled this pano with AutopanoPro. (I assume that many others were as well.) This was entirely handheld and shot a great speed without any attempt to try and stay in a "nodal" position or whatever. So I want to thank Alexandre and the whole Kolor team for their fantastic software without which this could never have happened! I also want to thank all of the amazing people on this forum for their help, especially GURL, Bo (the "other" one), mediavet and many of the regulars. Thank you very much, everyone!

Bo

PS: It's the sixth image here:
http://www.bostruyephotos.com/BSPWeb/Panos.html

[AlexandreJ]

by AlexandreJ » Thu May 19, 2011 7:52 am

Excellent Congrats.
Nice panoramas !
Was that Kelly Slater cloned ?

---
BTW : yes, Kolor is sponsoring this event.

[tived]

by tived » Thu May 19, 2011 10:14 am

congratulation Bo,

Excellent work!

If only I had gotten my stuff together to enter myself - anyway, you showed a stong story and image! Well done!!

Henrik

[Bmachine]

by Bmachine » Thu May 19, 2011 1:53 pm

Thank you for the compliment Alexandre.

Was that Kelly Slater cloned ?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Cloned in Photoshop ?
It was simply multiple exposures on the subject with APP aligning the background (if that is what you mean).

And then a TON of Photoshop cleanup of course. Moving crowd plus moving water (especially in very close foreground) means many hours at the computer.

Bo

Last edited by Bmachine on Thu May 19, 2011 2:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Bmachine]

by Bmachine » Thu May 19, 2011 2:21 pm

Thank you tived.

Speaking of Oz I also entered a handheld pano of the Sydney harbor at dusk. (the second one in the link from the original post). That was shot from the moving ferry. Also a ton of cleanup afterwards trying to match the damn water. But again APP was awesome in doing a lot of the initial heavy lifting.
That was shot with a nikon D700 at 3200 iso. I wanted to test the low light capabilities of that camera. It did remarkably well I thought.

Bo

congratulation Bo,

Excellent work!

If only I had gotten my stuff together to enter myself - anyway, you showed a stong story and image! Well done!!

Henrik

[AlexandreJ]

by AlexandreJ » Thu May 19, 2011 4:12 pm

I was wondering if it was Kelly slater, not how it was done

[Bmachine]

by Bmachine » Thu May 19, 2011 4:59 pm

I was wondering if it was Kelly slater, not how it was done

Oh I see. Yes this was the real Kelly! ;-)

[tived]

by tived » Fri May 27, 2011 3:31 am

Bmachine,

off topic here but how r u finding lightzone?

Henrik

[Bmachine]

by Bmachine » Sat May 28, 2011 12:15 am

I really like Lightzone a lot. It's kind of a photographer's interface on top of Photoshop. I often pop my panos in there after I'm done and hit the "Relight" icon. This analyzes the photo and adjusts gamma, saturation, white balance and contrast in a very "artistic" way. Most of the time the photo just "looks better".

I work in the movie industry and I adjust images all day long for a living. So on the weekend, I just want to push one button and have everything look better without having to think or work too hard at it. Lightzone is great for that. ;-)

Bo