If you haven’t noticed - I love panoramas. I think they do a fantastic job of capturing the feel of a location much better than any single picture could and they aren’t all that difficult to produce. Here is a quick tutorial on the methods that I use to take awesome travel panoramas.

I generally rely on two primary methods for taking them - either with my big dslr and photoshop or my iphone and a stitching app.

DSLR, Photoshop and Optionally a Tripod

This is the more established method that I use when I want something that I intend to either print out or blow up later. The method requires that I take several pictures that slightly overlap with a wide angle lens. If I can I will use my tripod that has a panning head on it, which allows me to take sharp shots with precise overlap.

When a tripod isn’t available though I simply snap a bunch of pictures and manually pan from left to right (or vica verca) across the scene.

Once you get the hang of it, the process takes only slightly longer than taking a single shot. I tend to take 3-5 shots for every panorama.

The next step is to use photoshop’s photomerge feature. You give it a list of pictures and it will try and blend them together in a meaningful way - usually a panorama.

Iphone + autostitch app

I can’t always have my camera + tripod with me but I will most likely have my phone. For the cost of a cheap app (under $3 and totally worth every penny), I can grab panoramas wherever I go. I use autostitch.

This method won’t yield the sharpest results but it will definitely be better than nothing. The iphone’s lens isn’t very wide, so be sure to capture shots both above and below the shots that make up your panorama. This will allow you to take in some of the sky and ground. So instead of 3 shots you will end up taking around 9. Autostich is a champ at combining everything together.

You can also use the same method to take vertical shots aka vertoramas. This picture of Saint Peters Cathedral is made up of 3 images taken while panning vertically. Despite having a very wide angle lens (10mm) there is no other way I could have captured the entire building from that position without using this method.

Thanks for reading and let me know if you want me to go into any greater detail into what exactly is involved. Otherwise this should be enough to get you started in taking awesome travel panoramas yourself.