Panorama, due west to north

Starting with four photos taken with my Casio Exilim 850 on January 31, I used Photoshop's Automate -> Photomerge command to create this panorama. That, plus an hour and a half of adjustments of Levels, Color Balance, and Layer masks gave this result. It's far from perfect, but passable.

I was disappointed in how well PS matched the colors from image to image (not well at all), but amazed at how it visually lined up each image with the others. Obviously the horizon made this easier, but still it's kind of uncanny. Here's the starting point:

I think the biggest problem is the difference in color and brightness values in the original images. Not sure why it's so dramatic, since they were taken only seconds apart. Maybe I can make some  adjustment in the camera to make them more consistent in the future?

 

Buying coffee at Dave's

Stopped in today to pick up some fair-trade coffee at Dave's Supermarket—the very one that will be threatened by the Super Wal-Mart opening up in Steelyard Commons. I remember the bad ol' days when all we had was a crappy grocery store in that location, one that smelled of disinfectant and still felt like it was crawling with germs.

So a few years ago Dave's,  a small local chain, the only one to open new stores in the city while the big chains retreated to the 'burbs, moved in. I'm afraid we've come to take this place for granted, but I sure hope people don't abandon it to save a few bucks a week at Wal-Mart.