Over the last year or so I have been experimenting with linear panoramas. At this point I have more failures than good images. I am by no means an expert on this technique. While I was in Buffalo, New York at the Silo City Photography Workshop I came across an opportunity to create a rather cool looking linear panorama.

The photographs for this image are from the eastern end of the Cargill Superior Grain Elevator. It is an high dynamic range composite image. When I sat down to put this together I quickly realized that even though I took 35 photographs, it still was not enough to create the image that I was hoping for. I did not allow enough overlap between images so the resulting panorama falls apart in a couple of places.

There are 5 evenly spaced bays in this part of the elevator. It is a massive structure! There should be 4 large round concrete columns in the foreground but due to the lack of appropriate overlap I had to eliminate the one on the right side of the image. Because I had to edit out this column the conflicting perspective of the concrete ceiling becomes apparent. I was so enamored of this great cavernous space that I didn’t pay enough attention to the foreground elements. The three broken concrete equipment supports in the foreground fall on the seams of the panorama and are not as complete as they could have been. Shooting this space and attempting to put together this image has been a real learning experience for me. I can’t wait to go back and try it again.

Khazad-dûm…? you may ask.

When I first walked into this space I immediately thought of the Lord of the Rings epic scene where Gandolf fights the Balrog. This takes place after the fellowship had passed into Khazad-dûm, otherwise known as Moria, the Black Pit. On the way to the Bridge of Khazad-dûm they pass through a large cavernous hall with lots of stone pillars. Anyone who has seen the movie should remember this right..?