A little experimenting.

Yesterday I posted a few images from my session with Karen and her horse Romeo.  In preparing for the shoot, I wrote down a shot list ahead of time to remind myself of certain poses and ideas that I was hoping to capture during our session.  Because every session is different, the list simply gives me a starting place and allows me to be more relaxed and confident.  The Brenizer Method is one of the techniques that I wanted to use for this session to create an art portrait of Karen and her horse.

Really just panoramic stitching, the technique was coined after photographer Ryan Brenizer, who used it to create panoramic images with incredible bokeh. (yes, that blurry background look and in the case of the Brenizer method, blurry foreground!)  Although it sounds complex, it's really not and there are tons of pretty good tutorials out there.  We can all create incredible panoramics, even with our cell phones.  However, the Brenizer Method takes the panorama a step further.

Multiple exposures of and around a subject are shot using manual focus (focusing on your subject and not changing your focus as you shoot the rest of the images) and a wide aperture with a medium telephoto lens.  (I used my 85mm prime lens at f1.8.) Shooting with a wide aperture, creates a more shallow depth of field than achievable with readily available equipment and can look amazing.  Your subject needs to hold their position for all the exposures and Karen and Romeo did an excellent job.  I recommend shooting JPG rather than RAW because even shooting JPG the end image (after stitching in post production) will be very large.  White balance should be set manually to minimize changes in color between frames.

While I've done plenty of panoramas, I've never tried this type of panoramic stitching and wanted to stretch my creative legs a little.  With this particular session, I actually prefer my initial single image, because I don't think the foreground holds enough interest.  However, I'll definitely be back for more!

Are there any experimental ways of shooting that you've done or you'd like to try?  Tell me about them!