Olympic National Park - Panoramics — Julian Calverley

After leading an ALPA Cameras workshop in the beautiful Olympic National Park with Capture Integration, I decided to stay on for an extra week, to make some personal work.

Kalaloch Creek meets the Pacific Ocean, Olympic National Park, WA.

I immediately fell in love with the Olympic National Park. The forests, waterfalls, creeks and beaches. The place had a curious feel and a damp vibe that I felt very at home with.

It was September too, and the rains had started. It was going to be an exciting week.

Falling rain in Maple Glade, Quinault Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, WA.

““The sheer scale of the landscapes in the Pacific Northwest do beg the question.. how on earth do I make a photograph of what I’m seeing before me...””

Maple Glade, Quinault Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, WA.

Instead of simply reverting to using a super wide lens, which I’m not particularly keen on due to the pulI and distortion, I found a solution by using a slightly longer wide lens and shooting multi frame panoramic images.

Second Beach, South of La Push, Olympic National Park, WA.

I used my ALPA 12 SWA with an HR Alpagon ƒ4.0 40mm SB17 lens. Using the SWA (Shift, wide angle) allowed me to shift the lens vertically, which was especially useful in the cathedral like rain forests, and the tilt adapter allowed me to dial in some tilt when required.

This set up and approach also allowed me to keep the camera level, which is ideal for shooting multi frame stitched panoramics.

Cooling rain in the Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, WA.

Visually, woodland and forest scenes can be incredibly chaotic if not approached in a certain way. There are a number of technics that can be used to ‘simplify’ a busy scene.

Working either early or late in the day, when the sun is lower. Shooting on days where the light is defused or when there’s a slight fog of haze, is also useful.

Using a polarising filter can also help with controlling the degree of reflection on shiny leaves.

As it turned out it rained a lot when I was working in the forest. This really helped by adding a beautiful, yet subtle, diffused light to the work. It felt magical.

Importantly when working in the forests, I planned my day so I could shoot in to the light. This helps create shadows, contrast and depth, which in turn aids visual separation and simplification.

Many of the images were shot in windy conditions, with movement in both the water and the branches and leaves, however the stitching software took care of any movement and anomalies.

Merriman Falls, near Lake Quinault, Olympic National Park, WA.

With some of the images being created from 10 x 80mpxl frames, you can imagine... the resulting 16 bit PSB files are large! (Did you know that PSB stands for Photoshop BIG!?)

First light. Second Beach, South of La Push, Olympic National Park, WA.

These relatively small jpegs simply don’t do the process or the work justice, so I urge you to view the slightly larger versions of the work here.

Better still you can obtain 40.5”x24” archival pigment prints of my panoramic work, here.

I’m pleased to say that some of the work was selected for ‘Lurzers Archive Top 200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide 20/21’

Technical Information :

Camera / Lens - ALPA 12 SWA with ALPA HR Alpagon 4.0/40mm SB17 with ALPA tilt/swing adapter 0° - 5°, 17 mm.

Filtration - 0.3 & 0.6 Soft edge ND Grad.

MFDB - PhaseOne IQ180. ISO 35.