Choose a Panoramic

Have you ever seen a homemade panoramic photo, or better yet, have you tried to take one? You stand very still, without moving a muscle, other than to move the camera. Keep snapping pictures as you turn to see the breath-taking scenery in front of you, be it the Grand Canyon or the most beautiful sunset at the beach. Try as you may, when those pictures are developed, you have a hard time getting them to line up just right. Without photo-stitching software, it’s nearly impossible.

Well, thanks to advances in technology, we don’t have to struggle through that anymore. You can achieve a perfect panoramic shot with a relatively inexpensive Advantix camera, many SLR cameras, as well as most digital cameras. Did you know that you don’t even need to have a panoramic camera to have one of your regular pictures reprinted as a panoramic? Read on to learn more about these long skinny pictures that will reshape the way you think…and scrapbook.

Demonstrate Size
When you come across something that’s bigger than life, you’re going to want to relay that grandeur in your scrapbook. When we took a family vacation to Disney World last year, we stayed at the Pop Century Resort, and as you can see in these pictures, it really was bigger than life, from the bowling pins that encompassed the stairwells of the hotel to the giant Play-Doh can out by the swimming pool.

I just happened to find the panoramic setting on my 4-year-old camera while we were at Disney World…lucky for me. (That’s what you get for not reading the instruction manual.) When we got home and had all our film developed, my favorite pictures were the panoramic photos.

In fact, I loved them so much, I asked the lady where I get my film developed if she could make a panoramic out of a regular photo. She showed me just how they do it on their computer. It took just minutes and she created this panoramic of the kids and me in front of the castle at Magic Kingdom. By scanning your negative into their computer, they have the ability to change the orientation, crop, zoom in, and even make the print into a panoramic. Make friends with your neighborhood photo processor; you’ll be glad you did.

Panoramic photos of a single child are a great way to measure their size. We live on a farm, so when the corn started to grow this year, I took my kids out so I could show them with photos how quickly the corn would grow. Here is Carmella in the cornfield in June. July’s picture on the right side shows the corn high above her dad’s head.

Group Photos
Not everything you come across is going to be larger than life, but you can still take advantage of the panoramic setting of your camera. Instead of an upright panoramic, what happens when you don’t turn that camera to take a picture in portrait mode, but in landscape? Of course you consider that for your scenery photos, but try it in your everyday photo-taking, too. I have four children, and when I saw them playing in a pile of leaves, I wanted to capture them in the moment, up close, but still all together. I used the panoramic photo as a border at the bottom of the page of this “Autumn Leaves” layout.

Four children might not be considered a large group shot for some people, but for even larger group shots, keep the panoramic setting in mind and arranging everyone so you can see their faces will be much easier. Family reunions are a good example of a time to use that panoramic setting, if you can.

We had many opportunities to take photos at various baseball, t-ball, and softball games this summer. This is my favorite one of the little t-ball players all lined up on their bench.

Field Day at my children’s school was a huge deal. They all had color-coded t-shirts, weeks of preparation, and then when the big day came…rain! So they moved the festivities inside, and while it might not have been everything they were hoping for, a good time was had by all. For the tug-of-war games they pitted classes against one another and I switched to panoramic so I could get the whole class in the frame.

Homemade Accents
If you have some time on your hands and want to have some fun with your panoramic photos, set up a neutral backdrop like a sheet, arrange items such as scrabble tiles, blocks, hats, shoes, stuffed animals, pine cones, fruits, Legos, etc. and take a picture of them. You’ll want to use a stool or chair to get some height before you take the picture. Fill the whole frame with your objects and voila, you have your very own border photograph like you would find in your local scrapbook store. Use these pictures as borders, cut decorative squares from them, fill in spaces of a color-blocked layout, or diecut your title letters from them; the possibilities are just endless.

You’ve already probably discovered that I am a little panoramic-crazy. I didn’t think I was THIS crazy though. One day I left the panoramic setting on by accident and didn’t even notice it. A whole roll of pictures from the Sweet Corn Festival came out in nice big 4” x 12”s. What a surprise that was! While I struggled with ideas for scrapping them, I ended up sending some to my friend Margaret Lembcke who created this layout for me with the pictures of my kids taking a ride on a horse for the first time. While some photos were left as panoramas, the ones she cropped actually look like great pictures and you might not know they were panoramic unless I had told you.

The next time you get in a scrapbooking rut, and you’re tired of the same old 4” x 6” photos, break out of your box, and give panoramic photos a try. Even if you don’t have a camera capable of taking panoramics, visit your friendly neighborhood photo developer with your favorite negatives in hand and see what they can do for you. You’ll be glad you did, in a BIG way!