Pano with Jeff Schultz in Alaska Knik River (pano) Alaska Knik River (pano) with glacier Wow! The technology! It is sooo easy to make impressive panos with the iPhone. Just touch the screen and pan across all the world's amazing scenery. Touch the screen again and presto, a perfectly stitched together pano. The phone adjusts for light, focal distant changes, and movement. It even edits out the anomalies. A very smart phone indeed!

Quick and easy! I love it.....but it's not perfect.

Look closely at this pano of Jeff Schultz. We had some fun in Hatcher Pass, Alaska, with this iPhone function. Unfortunately, the iPhone "decided" that as Jeff came around to my right that he no longer needed 3 of his fingers.....iPhone amputation!

He was, in fact, waving with all 5.

With my "real" camera, as I call it, I have to use my tripod, approximate a 20-30% overlap, adjust for lighting, and manually focus. And even then, I don't have a finished product until I stitch the whole thing together on my computer in post-production. Way more work. 

I've included here 2 photos of the Knik River with Knik Glacier (near Palmer, Alaska) in the background. With the iPhone, I got a great expanse represented, but there is some distortion. The dock and log in the foreground are straight, not curved as they appear. But, I think it is still a cool photo and easy, easy, easy to make.

The zoomed in photo of the distant glacier is also a pano, but done the "old fashioned" way....4-5 photos stitched together. I also borrowed Jeff's graduated neutral density filter for the shots, so that the sky and snow weren't blown out. Way more work, but it represents the scene more like one's eyes do when taking in the view.

A word about Jeff Schultz:

Just an unassuming guy here in my blog.....

If you are reading my pitiful little blog and enjoying any of my feeble scratching-at-the-surface of photography in Alaska, prepare yourself to be blown away!!!

(But first, check out my "Alaska" gallery on this website.)

Then, Google Jeff Schultz Photography. You will probably never come back to my website for Alaska photos again, but it is a risk I'm willing to take.

I had the pleasure of having Jeff be my guide for 2 days in Alaska. He took me to several of his favorite places. But this guy has been Alaska's "go to" photographer for over 30 years! He can do anything....portraits, landscapes, animals, you name it. His passion is adventure photography. And even after having survived a plane crash, he continues to take amazing aerial photos. The best representation of this is his portfolio of the Iditarod. Again, all you have to do is google the "Iditarod's official photographer", and Jeff comes up. 

It was a pleasure (and honor) to tromp around the tundra with Jeff. He is a great photographer and a nice guy.

Here's what I wrote for his Trip Advisor review:

Jeff was a great photography guide while I was visiting Anchorage recently. (And incidentally, a great photographer!)

He provided many helpful tips...such as instructing me in the use his graduated neutral density filter for optimizing some sweeping landscapes. 

It was so nice having an extra set of eyes too. My first morning I was enamored with the beauty of the tundra in fall colors and I was obsessing on some macro shots. With my head down, I could have completely missed the falcon that landed nearby. Luckily he was on the lookout, and he helped me quickly set up my tripod and telephoto to capture the falcon just as it flew straight towards me! 

I wanted to take some pictures of flowing water while in Alaska, and he took me to some beautiful rivers that were very easily accessible. He was very very patient! I had some ideas I wanted to try and his expertise helped the ideas materialize way more efficiently than I would have accomplished on my own. Thank you Jeff!

I reached out to Jeff, as opposed to some of the other guide services, because when I browsed his website he clearly has tons of experience photographing Alaska and I admire his work. I hope to return someday to participate in one of his workshops. The helicopter aerial photography sounds really fun! Tundra macro on Flat Top Hatcher Pass

(I'm including this last photo for the back story....earlier in the day, I had mentioned to Jeff that I would like to get some leaves moving in the water. He remembered what I had said and became my official leaf tosser!)