I am continuing to play around with Photoshop’s panorama capability, mainly to figure where it works best and how best to use it. The picture below shows Frank Gehry’s famous Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles on the right, along with the ongoing construction of The Grand, a billion-dollar mega-development, on the left.
As a photo this isn’t much, but as a demonstration it’s great. This is a full 180-degree view taken from the middle of the crosswalk on Grand Avenue looking south, and there’s no other way to get this view. If you back up—which you can’t anyway—you’ll lose the angle that shows the fronts of both buildings. If you don’t back up, you can’t include the whole scene even with an extreme wide-angle lens. You could do it from the Goodyear blimp, I suppose, but only if you happen to have the pull to get a ride.¹
As always with any extreme wide-angle shot, the price you pay is distortion. You can fix a lot of it, but never all of it. Grand Avenue, for example, is a straight line but displays as curved. The near building under construction is obviously distorted even though I corrected much of it. And the concert hall—well, it’s such a mish-mash of curves and angles that you can’t tell if it’s distorted or not. In any case, this picture provides a good view of what’s actually going on, something that’s all but impossible to get any other way.
¹If you do, please let me know. I’d love to get a ride on the Goodyear blimp.
