Click on the image to enter a 360° image. Using your mouse or finger, depending on device, you can then turn around in the scene.
The Greek Theatre in the Guild Inn, Scarborough. Not difficult to see why it’s a popular place for portrait photography, not only for weddings, but fall, winter and anything. The day before it was snowing and a couple were there with a photographer, his assistant and some additional lighting since it was very grey and dim between the snowflakes. Once I even saw some men in togas hanging out here — along with some lights and cameras. In the summer, there are concerts held here. I caught one, but typically they happen during our time out east in the summer.
If you look to the left of the sun…the clouds that just come up over the trees…that is a cloud bank moving in from over the lake. I didn’t have time to take all the shots I wanted before the blue sky was gone and I lost several fStops of light. It was nice seeing the sun for a little while, regardless.
Because of the bright sunshine and snow, this was a very high dynamic range scene, which posed a challenge for a camera. Expose for the snow, the trees would be black; expose for the trees, the rest would be blown out; expose for the theatre, the brights would be blown out and the trees would be very dark. It would have been easier as a single image, but I was shooting a 360° pano, so couldn’t avoid the really bright parts of the snow. My lens doesn’t allow filters. So…I shot this as an HDR: 3-5 images, 2EV or 1EV apart (depending on situation). I stitched the images together in PTGui, which does a dandy job dealing with HDR images.
You may notice that from some angles, the clouds look as if this may have been shot with a long exposure. It’s merely a reflection of the clouds moving very fast and many shots being required for the pano. I had to manually stitch the sky. The five frames per shot, 7 shots around and up, meant some movement does come through. Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a breeze on the ground, so the trees weren’t as problematic as the sky.