268/365 - Jim - King Cone

( f/11 10.5mm 1/500 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It was a nice warm day today and Carol wanted to go get her car washed. The car wash is not far from King Cones Castle, so we of course stopped in to get a cone. They have a drive through, so I used my fisheye lens and took a shot of the large cone statue they have in the yard. Then I used Photo-Brush to do a polar coordinate effect on it. That program has a few really cool effects that are a lot of fun to play with. This one isn't exact because it isn't a seamless panorama, but it does an alright job of blending and mirroring to make it look ok.

175/365 - Jim - Backyard Island

( f/22 18mm 1/40 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

Here is another island photo, but this time I had blue skies. This is my backyard, so my house is on the top below the sun, which makes it hard to see. I had a frustrating time stitching the photos together this time. It just took a while for it to turn out. The sky had to be edited in the corners because they just appeared as streaked sky. So I did some cloning and smoothing out. In then end, it's an alright polar shot.

152/365 - Little Island

( f/18 18mm 1/13 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

This is called a polar panorama. To do this you have to take several photos 360 degrees on a tripod. Then stitch them together. I used Windows Live to do it. My stitching isn't the best though. I see a few spots that don't match up very well. Then you resize the photo to be square. Using Photoshop Elements I then chose the Polar Coordinates filter which gave me this photo. It's a pretty cool effect and I have been wanting to try it. It's a pretty boring location, but now I know how to do it.