In November of last year I was commissioned by Ocean Properties to create some images of a new pool they were building at the Samoset Resort in Rockport. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you know – the Samoset is one of my favorite hotels in New England, and I was jazzed to create some images.  The panorama above is the image they chose to go with, and for a year now, I haven’t told anyone how it was created.  Next week I’m shooting the pool again, now that the bar is complete and the landscaping done, and I think I can finally share what went into creating the image above.

First, I should show you the scene when I photographed this:

The pool was finished, but the ground wasn’t, and it was a less than perfect day. It rained before these images were taken, and snowed after, and the winds were so strong they kept blowing the chairs around.  Also, we were shooting in the late afternoon to best show the fire in the firepit that hadn’t been completed, and the sun was low in the sky and shining into the camera lens. I’m just saying, I had a few obstacles.  Here’s what I did.  I shot a series of bracketed exposures for each of the images below, one image over exposed, and one under.

Each of this series was blended into a high dynamic range file in photoshop, so that the sky looked like summer, and the grass looked brighter.  Here’s an example of one of the hdr files:

When this was completed, I had five images just like the one above.  These I took back into Photoshop, to blend them into one long panorama shot.  Here’s what that looked like:

All that was left to do was to plant some grass, and shine the sun on the pool a little more.  Here’s the final image one more time so you can see it complete:

We do a fairly high amount of commercial shooting, and there’s always one important expectation for the photographer:  You have to come through.  No matter what the job site looks like, or the weather does, or the client doesn’t have ready, the only thing anyone cares about, is what will the photographer deliver.  Now you know my secret to creating multi image blends.  Thanks for looking – Will.