I find it one of the hardest challenges in landscape photography. Creating a HDR Panorama shot. In this blog I will explain how I do it.

The basics of a panorama shot

Creating a panorama picture isn't that hard. All you need is a tripod, a camera and some editing software like Photoshop (elements).

Shoot multiple photo's from left to right. Important is that all of your photo's need a 1/3 overlap. This is important because editing software, like Photoshop, needs this amount of overlap to merge all photo's together into one panorama photo. That way you are guaranteed of a successful shot. The software is smart enough to process all photo's into one big panorama photo. Maybe you need to play around with some settings before the best results rolls out.

The basics of a HDR shot

HDR stands for high dynamic range. Which means you underexpose and overexpose the same composition. That way you make sure you get all the colours in your frame. You need some editing software like Photoshop (elements) to merge all photo's. Ever pointed your camera at the sun during sunrise or sunset? Then you've probably noticed one part of your photo is under- or overexposed. You can fix this with a HDR photo. You take multiple photo's of the same composition but with different settings. Most camera's do have an HDR mode. All you need to do is decide how many different exposures are needed. I suggest you use a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 different exposures. Aim your camera, use HDR mode, shoot multiple shots. After that you need to use software to merge the photo's together. Tip: make sure there are no object moving fast in the shots. Merging photo's with moving objects will result in a bad result. Some water movement? Fine. Modern software can fix that. But moving cars for example is a disaster. So only shoot HDR on static objects or objects with minimal movement.

Combining these techniques

It is possible to combine both techniques. I recommend you practice with both techniques before you try to combine them. So how do you do it? You start at the left and go into HDR mode. You select the amount of different exposures. Then you shoot the left part of the panorama photo. After the first shots you aim your camera to the right. Make sure 1/3 of the next shot overlaps with the previous ones. Then you shoot the next series. And so on and so on. If done right you now have maybe 15,20 or 25 different photo's. All these photo's need some editing before we turn it into one picture.

You first filter all photo's with the same frame. You edit these as individual HDR photo's. After that you combine all HDR photo's into one panorama photo. Then the only thing left is the final editing. And there it is! Your HDR panorama photo!