My first "panography" attempt

Panography (sometimes written panografie) is a technique I've been wanting to try for a long time. The term was coined (I believe by the founder of the flickr group dedicated to these images) to describe a hand-held, loosely-assembled panorama shot. The general idea is, you stand in a spot and shot multiple images in different directions (even at different angles, although keeping the same zoom level and other settings). Unlike the traditional, formal panorama shot, you don't need to cover every single bit of the scene, overlapping is good, and the camera orientation need not stay the same.

Detailed steps on how to stitch them together are given at this Photojojo post. Key points are to use a white background and lower the opacity of each image to around 50%. Source images may be rotated, but not skewed or cropped.

It is fairly straight-forward to do in any image editing program that supports layers (while the Photojojo steps reference Photoshop, it is just as easy in GIMP, which I used). I should also note that I used Faststone to batch-resize my source images down to a more manageable size. I've been giving Faststone quite a workout recently, and I'll try to write more about it soon.

My panography was built from 21 source images and depicts the Joyful Noise homeschool band performing at a Christmas festival in the Marietta, GA, town square. Folks were moving about some, as you can see in some parts of the finished photo, and I clearly missed some spots. More practice will, I'm sure, produce better results.

Give it a try, and let me know what you come up with!
--sdc