Oakbrook Panorama

by Steve Eshom

Back in March while the UP was still detouring around the Frazier slide I spent a couple of days chasing around the Oregon Trunk.  During one trip I finally photographed something I’ve wanted to photograph since I started carrying a DSLR.  That something is a panorama including a train.  Of course this requires the train to be stopped so just the right circumstances had to be present to make this work.  In March everything lined up….

1. A northbound UP detour took the siding at Oakbrook, OR.  The DS did not give them permission to leave the SSS Oakbrook in reverse.   Because of this the conductor had to walk up from the rear so the engineer pulled just far enough into the siding to clear and then stopped.  This meant the train was not around another corner at the NSS Oakbrook allowing more of the train to be viewed.
2. The sun was out and generally pointed in the right direction.
3. I could see nearly the entire train ( no trees or other obstructions).
4. I had the thought to remember to take the panorama instead of just shooting one shot (ahh, at age 41 this can become an issue).

This image is a 31 photo panorama (3 horizontal passes) that measures 13,481 X 4021 pixels (45″ X 13″).  On disk it is 1.6GB (TIFF files including layers).  The original images were all processed together using Lightroom’s sync features and then exported as separate TIFFs.  I used Photoshop’s photomerge to combine them to form the large image.  Rendering takes about 20 minutes.   The best statistic of all is I had a blast putting it together!

The Q-RVPW1-06 stops just inside the SSS Oakbrook.  This train is detouring over the Oregon Trunk because of the massive slide at Frazier in the Oregon Cascades. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 8:04 pm and is filed under photo technique, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.