One of my projects is to photograph historical places away from the standard history book locations.
British lieutenant colonel George Washington explored the Youghiogheny to expel the French from the Forks of the Ohio.
He and several under his command floated past the point pictured above in May of 1754.
About five miles downstream, they found a large waterfall and abandoned the idea of attaching Fort Duquesne by water. They when back upstream and took an overland route.
On May 28th, he attacked a French detachment at a rocky glen on Chestnut Ridge above the river. French commander Joseph Coulon de Jumonville was killed, this incident ignited the French and Indian War.
Specific Feedback Requested
Anything that comes to mind about the project and/or photograph.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
This is a panorama of 12 images. With the camera in manual mode, I used the center of the view as the anchor exposure. Blending was done in Lightroom Classic. There are times that in making panoramas, LR doesn’t always use all of the images. The problem is that the edge files are underexposed, and the process can’t find hard lines. If that happens, I highlight the stack and do an AUTO processing to brighten the dark images. Then LR works very well. The rest of the adjustments are made in LR or Adobe Raw.
Nicely done Paul. This image has an almost natural vignette due to the rocks and trees. All the attention is drawn into the center of the image. The image reminds me of the large screen Cinemascope films that were popular in the 50x. The dynamic range is well handled with good detail in the shadows. It would be nice to be able to see a large version.
I’m partial to “wide screen” frames for landscape work. I’ve printed several of this body of work that 3’ wide and once framed they are quite agreeable. Printing is easy, but the matting and framing gets to be expensive.
Nice work Paul, this is well composed and processed. I love the framing of the trees (especially on the right). And Mother Nature even chipped in with a well timed cloud placement. My only suggestion would be to post this at a larger size, so we could better appreciate all the nice details here. You posted this at 1080 px, and you could re-post it as large as 1600 px. You could edit your post, remove the smaller sized image, and replace with a larger sized one. I think the larger one sees this, the better it becomes…
This has been printed five feet horizontally and it looks great. The challenge with big prints is big frames that need to be braced to prevent sag, and a lot of glass.
What a cool project. I wonder if the weather was the same when GW floated past? That would be an interesting twist - photograph the scene under similar weather conditions.
The panorama looks really well done to me. You framed it nicely, with the trees framing what looks like a little inlet and the patch of sky with fluffy clouds.
Do you ever frame prints without glass? I’ve been doing that lately, and I think it looks quite nice. Painters don’t put their paintings behind glass, so why should we?
A bit of history (I particularly love the American Revolution time period) and a gorgeous photo, how perfect. As folks have said the framing is really nice and the stitch looks good too. It’s hard to shoot under these conditions, but it works and that cloud was a perfect bit of serendipity.
Perhaps it’s to keep the paper from warping. A canvas is stretched over and internal frame so this problem doesn’t arise. I suppose if you glued the photo to the backboard you could avoid this problem.
This photo was taken in August, and Washington was on the river at the end of May. I’ll mark my calendar and make a new image.
I did a commissioned work to be printed on aluminum. It was beautiful and didn’t require a frame and glass. The cost was high but less than what my frame shop would charge for a simple wood frame and glass. And lighter weight. It also had a clean look without a frame.
The region around the Youghiogheny River Gorge has a lot of history. It was the primary route for settlers leaving the coastal colonies and going west. The Yough flows into the Mon and then meets the Allegheny at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio.
The stitch was easy. Lightroom does a marvelous job and it’s a one-click process. Photoshop has the same feature.
When I was making B&W prints I would hot press them to a stiff matboard backing and then into a frame. I’ve forgotten the name of the adhesive paper we used.
