Leica S2 New England Fall Foliage Trip – Day Five

The above shot will be next redone as a triptych.

By the way, the tripod for that shot was loaned to me by Joe Donovan. He has a very nice panoramic leveler on the Gitzo 3 XL. So he gets his name on the photo as “tripod by Joe”.
But more importantly, he demonstrated the lighting technique two nights earlier. The best fall shots are taken after the sun has set. The shutter speed on the shot was one and a half seconds. Joe taught us all to shoot long well.
Thanks Joe

David,
I had to laugh at your Kent Pond photo when I saw it was taken over 60 seconds.
When I took it, it only took 1/3 second.
And why was that? Because I recall you got lost getting to the site. Mark had told you exactly where to turn we thought. So you arrived in true darkness rather than dusk. I still remember your van with head lights on flying down the dirt road 15 minutes after we had arrived. The light had dropped off quickly. You set up your tripod more quickly.

But hey, you got the shot! A key learning from the trip was the ability to keep shooting when it is truly DARK.

I include below this shot that Mark and I worked on before Kent Pond. You were in the van in front of us and said you wanted to study your map as where to take the next shot. Mark in our van merely laughed and said the next shot was behind us. So we backed up a quarter of a mile and got this merged panorama of trees above the highway. The cropped close-up shows you conferring with the other van on where we should go next to take a autumn shot, a shot Mark had already figured out by backing up.

The triptych is the slicing and dicing of the panorama. Is is good for 3 two foot by two foot panels. I was using a 120mm. Mark shot this with a 180mm so if he used his shot to get the triptych, he would have less cropping and waste. So his triptych could go in 3 foot by 3 foot panels.

The next shot I recall was then at Kent Pond, a very good choice, but for you in the dark.

BTW, had a wonderful time, and thank you for scouting out all the good spots a year earlier.

I like it, but do it as a triptych.

When I started this post last Oct. I showed a panorama from the last night in Vermont.
I suggested then that it would make a good ten foot wide triptych.

I sold the heavily modified image as an eleven foot triptych back in January. This week, I was visiting the client showing new work, and took this photo of the triptych installed in the client’s office.

I like it, and more importantly, so did the client.

Jack

The smile on Mark’s face about the back story makes me smile again.

The back story for other readers is that only Mark knew exactly where to drive to get this shot in the falling light. I was riding with him.
The last van made a wrong turn, even though they were following us, and arrived in total darkness. Mark, please remind me who the other driver was?

Mark, doing a canvas wrap for a triptych is as you suspected, a bit of a pain. Yes you are correct that the wrap sides are “overlap” or extensions from the adjacent image. When this triptych was initially hung on the wall, they did it with no space between the panels. Done that way, the image is continuous as a panorama. It was then rearranged to allow for the gap that you see. I much prefer it with a gap. Going forward, I will be avoiding wraps for two reasons, I now have the S2 resolution to do large panels on paper stock, and I prefer to use frames with matting. This client wanted canvas wrap, so I did it that way.

By the way, this client was the reason I started doing triptychs. The company was one of my first out of state clients. I had challenges in shipping huge panoramas long distances. My agent suggested I consider cutting the panoramas into three parts as they would be much easier to ship. As readers of this forum know, I subsequently decided that I liked the triptych form as more interesting and distinctive art form. They also sell better. But not all panoramas work as triptychs. My “rules” are that each panel should look good just as a single panel. That doesn’t always happen. I have gotten to where I can now visualize before the shot, what might be a good triptych. Furthermore, it was David Farkas, back before he sold me my S2, who on looking at my evolving style, suggested I try vertical triptychs. I shot one on the Fall S2 trip, and that is the work that I was showing to this client during this past visit. Selling huge panels, not only becomes possible with the resolution of an S2, but it is profitable enough to allow me to justify the S2, which is how David benefits from his suggestions.