Heading for the Virginia mountains is always fun, as we anticipate what the cascades and wildflowers are doing each year. Since Mother Nature has a mind of her own, the timing of spring always varies.

This year, because of the large snow storms, the cascades were particularly magnificent, but the wildflowers in the gorges were quite late. That said, we found plenty of flowers to photograph.

For this Same Place — Different View, we’ll draw from a few locations we visited with our participants. As some of you already know, we never tell our group what to photograph but we help them seek their own vision.

The first morning, we headed to a private gorge where there are dozens and dozens of cascades…

I love creating panoramas. For me, it’s just plain fun.

BUT, it is challenging, and it does take planning. Just as you plan and visualize the finished photograph for a “regular” shot, you have to do so for a panorama. I add an extra twist, as most of my panoramas are also HDR images. For those who don’t know, HDR stands for high dynamic range. Think of the zone system. The eye can see a wide range of values (lights to darks), but the camera can only record a fraction of that range. By merging a series of bracketed images, one gains details in the highlights and shadows that might otherwise be lost.

My very first panorama was also an HDR image. Nothing like starting out with something simple. Arnie and I were out in Arizona on assignment, and I got up at 4:00 a.m. to climb one of the local hills. It was August, and it was HOT, even at that early hour. I could not face lugging my tripod up the steep slope, but when I reached the saddle, I regretted my decision.

There was the most gorgeous scene with what I call “ZOT light,” those rays of light that spread out, much as in a painting from the Hudson River School. Clearly, I needed to make a panorama. I’ve always been steady, having developed some pretty effective but definitely humorous stances. I took a chance. After all, in this digital age, if it doesn’t work, hey, nothing lost.

I planned where the beginning and end of my shot would be, then rotated, click-click-click, click-click-click …

“Ah well,” I thought to myself, “there was a lost opportunity for a great panorama. Bummer!”