We arrived in Lyon for the second time mid afternoon on Tuesday, November 25. We boarded the AmaDagio in Lyon the previous Thursday after flooding in southern France forced a modification of our river cruise. The water was too high for the AmaDagio to pass under some of the bridges on the Rhȏne River. So, instead of starting in Arles and cruising up the Rhȏne River to Lyon, we boarded in Lyon and cruised down river. However, because we were slated to visit the Beaujolais region and experience the release of the 2014 Nouveau Beaujolais wines in the region near Lyon, the AmaDagio brought us back to Lyon in time for our previously scheduled tour and tasting in a winery featuring Nouveau Beaujolais wine, the first wine of the harvest, only 30 days old…quite delicious, I might add. But my photos today don’t involve wine. Rather they focus on panoramas.
Until this morning, I’d never created a panorama shot although I’ve taken many shots intended for that purpose over the past couple of years. Now that Photoshop makes it so easy to merge a group of shots into one, I plan to do it more often. A Scott Kelby training video I watched a couple of years ago introduced me to the concept and, using Scott’s hint (at the start take a photo of one finger to indicate the starting point, then take your group of shots for the pano, then take a shot of 2 fingers to indicate the end) I hope I will be able to locate the shots I intended to use as panos. Whether I’ll be able to do that, however, is anybody’s guess.
These three panos represent three different views of Lyon. I took a group of shots to create the first pano by leaning out of the so-called French Balcony in our room on the AmaDagio. A French balcony is a sliding glass door with bars across to keep guests from stepping out and dropping into the water below.
I took the shots for the second panorama from atop a high hill overlooking Lyon toward the Rhȏne River. The AmaDagio is down there somewhere but I’m not sure where.
I took the shots for the nighttime panorama from the top deck of the AmaDagio. I used my new Manfrotto travel tripod and, true to form, I failed to practice with it before the trip. As a result, and fumbling in the the dark on deck, I was not successful in capturing the kind of shots I sought. I discovered that the travel ball head does not have a pano setting, at least in the dark I was unable to find it, so I had to move the tripod for each shot. I gave up before I got too frustrated. I ended up with only a few in focus shots to use in this panorama making it a bit less panoramic than the others.
