a panoramic of the Mall...

I've always wanted to do more panoramic pictures, I enjoy the challenge of taking multiple pictures and them merging them in Photoshop.  I've found that the earlier versions of Photoshop were not all that great at merging pictures, seams were usually very noticeable.  But I thought I'd give Photoshop CS5 a try at merging photos and I have been very pleased, seams are hardly noticeable, some more slight blending is however usually required.  And the effect is rather pleasing and sometimes hard to grasp, as is the case in this picture.

I went out to the Mall in Washington, DC (if you couldn't make the location out from the picture) on the evening of 3 March to catch the sunrise.  I was walking around the Mall to find a good vantage point after finding parking, a whole other issue in DC, and ended up in front of the White House between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. 

Well I liked the conditions (temperatures were definitely on the chilly side, especially with that wind), and proceeded to take bracketed shots (-2, 0, +2), because a panoramic shot is nice, an HDR panoramic shot is more nice!  I started to my left with the Lincoln Memorial, and 9 bracketed shots later (for a total of 18 pictures) I ended up to my right at the Washington Monument, with the White House visible in the center.

I then processed each HDR shot individually using Nik HDR Efex Pro.  Next step involved using Photoshop CS5's photomerge capability to some rather remarkable effects.  I used the clone stamp tool to blend some of the pictures a little more seamlessly.

The final picture is about 88" wide by 12" high, and rather remarkable I think. Almost Escheresque maybe too?