This summer, we planted another sunflower fort. We drew a large square on the ground (about 4×4), and planted sunflower seeds and pre-soaked morning glory seeds into that area, so that they would grow up together. The sunflowers would form the walls, and the morning glories will wrap around them, taking over, and pulling them together at the top.
Well, our morning glories didn’t pull together as nicely as usual…but they did grow well.
Ruth and I spent some of Saturday outside, photographing the garden, including the sunflower fort. I laid down inside the fort and commented that I wished I could take a panoramic photo of the inside. My daughter, now 16 and getting to be smarter than me, looked at me with a look of disbelief. “Uh, mom, you already can do that with your camera.”
“I can? Noooooo! Coool!”
You have to understand. I have a stinking COLLEGE DEGREE in photography. Of course it was from the Reagan era, when we still used darkrooms and when I was still using my Nikon Nikormat that I bought off a guy who used it in Vietnam (being naturally very accident prone, I needed a tough camera. I figured one that survived Vietnam could survive me, but I was wrong).
Dear daughter climbed into the sunflower fort with me, and there we were, both laying on our backs, on a beautiful September day, enclosed in a fortress of Sunflowers and Morning glories, and she homeschooled me in how to take a panoramic photo with a digital camera.
The subtitle for this is “Things we learn while we think we’re homeschooling the kids”, or maybe “The Payoff”…the day you look over and see your baby is practically all grown up, with opinions of her own, with beauty and intelligence, and able to teach you a thing or two about something you used to be “the expert” in.
To take a panorama photo, set your camera to “panorama” if you have such a setting on the top of your camera. Your camera will allow you to take up to three photos.
Take the first photo, hit next (or whatever prompt your camera gives you. You’ll see a ghost image of your first photo, which you can now line up with your second before you take it. Snap it, hit next, and line up the third photo. Afterward, it will publish out the panorama.
Pretty neat, huh?
