This photograph of St. Thomas was produced with 2 new technologies that came with the digital era. First is stitching, which allows me to photograph a a larger are than my lens will cover. This photograph was shot with a 70-200mm zoom lens set at 70mm. I could have shot this with a 16mm lens to get the same coverage. But the longer lens gives a more natural perspective. Plus the 5 sections that make up the “panorama” also gives me more resolution. The resolution here is something akin to using a 60 megapixel camera.
The second technology that was used is referred to as HDR or high dynamic range. Film or digital can only record a narrow range of tones from black to white compared to the human eye. Either the photograph has properly exposed highlights and the shadow areas are totally black or vise versa. So the photographer takes 3 or more images of the same scene. One of the images is shot “normally” while numbers 2 and 3 are shot overexposed and underexposed. When the 3 shots are blended in a program like Photoshop you get an image that has a much larger range of tones as the above photograph does. Most photographs done of downtown at twilight you can see the lights of the ship and stores but not detail in the streets or landscape as above.
St. Thomas Nights, as I call it, was produced form 15 separate images. The photograph was used on the cover of Destinations Magazine and sells through retail outlets across the territory.
