Jim Divitale, Photoshop guru extrordinare also told a bunch of us at the PPOC convention in Winnipeg to start your panorama series with a shot of your feet, and when you're finished, take another shot of your feet. This way your series is "bookended" by your feet and you'll know which images belong to which series.

This is by far the best info I have been given about panorama photography! Seriously. When you're out in the field, shooting panos all day, once you get back to you computer, you will have no recollection of where one set starts and the other ends. the feet shots save you a ton of time, and frustration.

• To reduce the number of shots use the widest wide angle lens you have.
• Shoot portrait, not landscape for max vertical coverage.
• Make sure each photo overlaps the previous one by about 15%-20%.
• Rotate around the point where the light enters the lens rather than around your body.
• Keep the lens in the same position, but rotate it around.
• Camera set to aperture priority.
• Set your white balance manually.
• Make sure the exposures between shots is no more than +/-2 EV
• Shoot one shot straight up at the sky or ceiling (zenith)
• If you can, take a shot of the ground, (not including your feet) to help you fill in the hole - nadir - (more about this in the post production tutorial)
  The exact number of shots you’ll need depends on the angle of view of your lens - the wider it is the fewer shots you need. With some lenses you’d need 10 shots to make the full 360 degrees facing slightly down, another 10 facing slightly up, then one for the nadir, 21 in total.
  
  With my Nikon D300 and 10.5 mm fisheye I need 6 for the full 360 degrees and one for the nadir and one for the zenith, 8 in total. You can find more on setting up for handhelp panoramas here.
  
  If you're using a tripod and pano head, your set up and shooting technique will be the same, but obviously you won't have to worry about holding your camera steady, or figure out how to rotate it correctly.
  
  If you are using the Nodal Ninja tripod head, you won't even have to do the math. You set the pano head for the lens you will be using, and it automatically tells you when to stop rotating to take your shot. It also automatically adds the overlap as well. It's become a standard tool for me - always on my tripod. You just never know when you find a great 360 scene.
  
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• HOW TO PLAN PANORAMAs - COMPOSITION
  

  
  

  PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS - HOW TO PLAN YOUR PANOS
  

  
  

  Planning panorama photos and considering your final image composition is amost more important for panoramic photography as it is for normal photographs. Because you aren't looking at the final scene on a flat surface, it's often difficult to know how your pano will actually appear once you're done.
   

•  I've often had surprises (both bad and good) when stitching panoramics together and see what it all looks like. Sometimes I haven't lined up properly so the centre part of the stitched image is off centre and looks unbalanced. Other times my tripod was not level and this too causes me great grief as it can spoil an otherwise awesome panoramic image.
  
  These technical issues are just one part of my panorama planning process. The other is trying to envision a flat composition in 360 degrees, when I can't SEE it all at the same time.
  
  My panoramic photography planning process includes scruitinizing the entire scene, whether indoors or out, and assessing exposure, all around the view. Determining where the sun is for outdoor shots, and determining what the difference in exposure values is from shot to shot. Checking for shadows - they are difficult to deal with all around!
  
  Then I also look for points of interest and elevations - things coming up from the ground and extending into the sky. If I will be making a tiny planet panorama, these elevations are what makes the final panoramic image really powerful. The long lines keep the viewers' eye in motion, keeping them enchanted.
  
  Here's how the Rule of Thirds translates for panoramic compositions and planning:

  
  
   

  
   

Visualize the scene around you and imagine that you are in the centre of the green spot. The green is ground, foreground and floor. The brown is the elevation zone, in which you should have objects that extend onto the sky (blue). These may be trees, mountains, buildings, poles, generally they will have a vertical quality. The blue area is the sky and for interest, it's best to have some clouds, as a pure blue sky is unimaginative and hard to blend in the stitching software - from the dark side to the sunny side.

On a flat plane this is what your plan should look like:

Notice that the spatial zones each take up 1/3 of your panorama image. Some of the vertical elements can extend behond the 1/3 area but if there are too many, or if there is not enough sky, the tiny planet won't look like it's floating in space. If there are too few elevations, your final panoramic planet image will look....guess?...yep, flat. Flat is not exciting or invigorating - height, terrain, texture are all great panoramic photo elements.

These are good rules of thumb even if you are only making a normal panorama photo - the rule of thirds is pretty universal. Break it only if you know what you are doing.


This article was printed with permission from Alexandra Morrison, who is a professional nature photographer, digital artist and publisher of  the Nature-Photography-Central web site.