First Snow

John, simply beautiful!  The color and processing is striking!  Just entering in to the digital worlds, my hats off for anyone pulling off such a stitch! Great job.

My only nit, and would be a big one if I had a monster print hanging on the wall, is the at least perception of a slight ccw rotation.  No doubt in order to pull off such a stitch, you have camera/tripod all leveled up.  But here's my thinking and perception.  The shoreline along the left is receding and that is understood, that is not what gives me the feeling of a tilt.  It's the far shoreline in the middle of the frame.  I can't tell if it's receeding or not, but given the distance and straight on angle of view, at least in my mind's eye, that shoreline is essentially straight and should be visually level in the frame. Maybe you and others don't see it that way, but I wanted to mention in case anyone else might see it.

Other than that, I think this is a gorgeous take on such an iconic location.

Lon

Lon,
Thanks for your comments. The shoreline to the right of center is also receding which gives the impression of some ccw rotation. I actually used the shoreline below and slightly right of Mt Moran (mountain in center) that was parallel to the location I shot from as a reference for leveling the final stitched image. As that shoreline recedes to the right, where the tree line meets the water the shore is probably close to a mile further away from my shooting location as it is in the center. The shore line on the far right side is a good two miles away.

66 image stitch.  Very impressive.  I can't seem to do even 3 or 4 without having evidence of the stitch.  Speaking of which, I think I see a stitch line on the far right in the slightly dark line of water just before it becomes dark water.  That shuld be easy to fix (for you, but probably not for me.)  Excellent photo.

Lovely scene with great, crisp colors.  I agree with Lon on the ccw tilt. It might not be real, but it is perceptible.  I can see a stitch line (uneven ripples) roughly centered under the far right peak.   I can imagine a less centered image with that far right 1/4 cropped off completely.  Incredible job with the stitch!
ML

I have done a few gigabyte images stitching Hasselblad photos together, each of those individual frames run about 250 MB each, so some computational patience is necessary.   Nice light, not sure what the optimal number of images is. This is similar in conception to a now well known image stitched of the Everest Base Camp area.  

I do find the apparent lean distracting.

Cheers:  Tom

Hi John,

I have had a chance to look at your pano work, and I am really enjoying what you are doing. This image looks great to me at this size, and I tried my hand at a couple of Panos while out that way at Grand Teton national Park. There was nothing close to what you do, but still new for me. I may ask your thoughts at some point.

very sweet image

I can see where Lon and some others see the CCW tilt, and I think I see the stitch line too, is that in fact what it would look like?

Thanks for all you all's comments. The consensous on ccw tilt forced me to go back and revisit the stitch. I rotated it cw some so I think you will find this version has no tilt. I had a hard look at the area you pointed out as a stich line. One of the difficultes doing this kind of work with water is wind currents and ripples. I used a Gigapan to capture this with it set to do vertical collumns top to bottom, left to right. 22 columns 3 rows. After looking at the individual images I can see that the ripple pattern on the water in that area changed over the time it took to take the two upper photos. All other areas of the image are perfectly aligned.
 
I have restitched the image and uploaded a new viewer to my website. Using the viewer you can zoom into the image to eqivalant of a wall mural size (8' x 32').  If you inspect the stitch line area you will see the change in the ripple pattern. This is a link to the viewer. http://www.abbascreationsphotography.com/First%20Snow/First_Snow.html

Ryan Shain, if you want to email me I would be glad to chat with you about techniques.

John,  thanks for taking the time to re-work and then repost.  I guess consensus won out?  ;-)  I did want to post a comment that at least to me, it looks much better, including any anomolies with the stitching.  (now you have some foreground in the LLC - not sure if you want that in your final print file.)

Looks great!