Matriarchs
Barry Thompson LRPS; DPAGB; BPE5*
Overall Objective:
Create a panoramic image of a group of older Indian women (matriarchs) gathered in the foreground near the Taj Mahal in Agra. The women are to appear engaged and natural, dressed in traditional attire, conveying presence and cultural identity.
Using two overlapping frames using a medium zoom lens (e.g. 24–200mm), with settings around f/8 for depth of field and a fast shutter speed to maintain sharpness.
Merge the images into a seamless panorama, ensuring alignment and clarity. Remove distracting elements (e.g. modern objects or non-engaged individuals) to maintain focus on the subjects.
Apply subtle adjustments to colour, vibrance, and exposure to enhance realism without over-processing.
Finish with a wide, letterbox-style crop to emphasise the subjects against the architectural backdrop.
Detailed Explanation:
Camera: Z6II with 24-200mm lens.
Exposure: 1/500 at f8, ISO 1000
The two images were then loaded into Adobe Lightroom Classic (LRC), from there they were de-noised using the default settings in the Detail section of the Develop Module.
Still in LRC the two images were selected (CMD Mouse Click (Mac), Control Mouse Click (PC) then from the Menu Bar choose Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama this process seamlessly stitches the images together.
The image was then opened in Adobe Photoshop and converted to a smart object, from the Menu Bar go to Layer > Smart Objects > Convert To Smart Object.
The reason behind converting an image to a Smart Object in Photoshop enables non-destructive editing, allowing the user to resize, rotate, or warp layers multiple times without losing original image quality.
There are several areas that are distracting in the image e.g. the two air conditioning units that need to be removed. I also wanted to remove the lady at extreme left as she wasn’t engaging in the taking of the photograph.
I made a selection around the lady and the air conditioning unit behind her, using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. I then painted over this selected area with the Remove Tool Brush set to large. I used the same technique to remove the air conditioning unit at the right hand side of the image.
Various other areas were then tided up to remove any possible distractions.
The penultimate operation was to take the image back into Camera Raw, either by clicking the Camera Raw Icon on the layer thumbnail or clicking the Icon Bar Filter > Camera Raw Filter.
From that interface small adjustments were made to Vibrance, Saturation and Exposure.
The final operation was to use the Crop Tool to give a pleasing crop to the image in Letterbox format.