Washington D.C.

Cherry Blossoms by the Jefferson Memorial /  by Todd Henson

Cherry Blossoms by the Jefferson Memorial

Spring has come to the region and it’s the time of year when many flowering trees bloom, such as the famous cherry trees in Washington, DC. There are usually many events surrounding the cherry trees, most associated with the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. But this year will be different. Many, if not all, of the events have been cancelled. I don’t know what the scene will look like this year, and I don’t expect I’ll be a part of it, but I thought I’d share how the scene looked in the Spring of 2011.

This photo was taken on April 2, 2011, along the shore of the Tidal Basin facing the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. I liked how the cherry blossoms reached overtop the paved path, hanging over the water, with people walking below them, sometimes stopping to photograph a group of blossoms. I was pleased to capture a couple of paddle boats in the scene. And I chose to partially obscure the Jefferson Memorial with the cherry blossoms. On this day there was still construction at the waterfront of the memorial. I’d have liked to capture an image without construction, but it doesn’t stand out too much, and it is what it is.

Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome, though I worry I may have done too much in post-processing. I worked on this image more than I do most, trying to create a realistic impression of the scene, but also push it a bit, trying for a more three dimensional look, enhancing contrast and color. It’s always a fine line when trying to create art as an idealized view of life, reflecting more what we felt at the time than exactly what we saw.

Let me know in the comments below whether you feel I pushed too far in post, or whether you think it works as it is. Would you have done anything differently?

Wherever you are I wish you well. Stay safe, and stay healthy!

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Fort Hunt Park, Virginia /  by Todd Henson

Entering Fort Hunt Park, part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia

Fort Hunt Park is located near Mount Vernon, along the Potomac River in Northern Virginia, on land once owned by George Washington as part of his River Farm plantation. It is part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which is a national park. Though primarily a recreational park, with sports fields, playgrounds and areas for picnics or cookouts, it is also of historic significance.

Pavilion A at Fort Hunt Park, located at the main parking area, surrounded by open fields

Fort Hunt was completed in 1897, just in time for the Spanish-American War. It was built as part of the Endicott Coastal Defense System, proposed by Secretary of War William C. Endicott, to upgrade the country’s coastal defenses. Being located on the Potomac River, Fort Hunt, along with Fort Washington, across the river in Maryland, were tasked with protecting Washington, D.C. from naval assault.

A view of Battery Mount Vernon at Fort Hunt Park along the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia.

Though completed before the start of the Spanish-American War, Fort Hunt never actually saw any action during that war. As technology advanced, the coastal defense system provided by installations like Fort Hunt were no longer needed, so its guns were dismantled and sent off to support World War I operations. But the fort continued to be used by the military until the 1930s, when it was converted into a Civilian Conservation Corp camp.

In 1933, Fort Hunt became Fort Hunt Park, part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, a national park. However, with the onset of World War II, Fort Hunt was temporarily turned back over to the military and used for top secret military intelligence operations. This lasted four years, after which it returned to its status as national park land.

Today you can visit and walk along some of the remains of the military fortifications of Fort Hunt. There are four batteries still located in the park, as well as the Battery Commander’s Station.

Battery Sater

Battery Sater, Fort Hunt Park, Virginia

Battery Sater was completed in 1904 and supported three 3-inch rapid-fire guns with a range of 4.5 miles. It was the last of the four gun batteries completed, and also served as a command center for mines placed in the Potomac River between Fort Hunt and Fort Washington.

One section of Battery Sater from the ground level.

Looking out at Battery Sater from the top level.

A leaf filled walkway of Battery Sater.

A look inside one of the closed off rooms of Battery Sater.

I enjoyed photographing Battery Sater. It was one of the two batteries, along with Battery Mount Vernon, that supported three guns, making it second largest of the structures. There were lots of interesting little nooks and crannies to see while walking its walls. I even tried using the high ISO features of my camera to see into the dark of some of it’s closed off rooms.

Battery Porter

Looking up at Battery Porter, Fort Hunt Park, Virginia

Battery Porter was completed in 1902 and supported one 5-inch rapid-fire gun with a range of 7 miles. This gun was intended to draw enemy ships into range of the larger and more powerful guns of Battery Mount Vernon.

Battery Porter is fairly small, as it supported a single gun, so I didn’t create many photographs of this location.

Battery Robinson

Battery Robinson, just outside the main entrance to Fort Hunt Park, Virginia

Battery Robinson was completed in 1902 and, similar to Battery Porter, supported one 5-inch rapid-fire gun, whose purpose was also to draw enemy ships into range of the larger guns.

Battery Robinson is located just outside the fenced entrance to the park. I photographed it on a different day than the majority of the photos in this post. With the leaves off the trees I noticed you can see the Potomac River from this location.

Battery Mount Vernon

Battery Mount Vernon, Fort Hunt Park, Virginia

Battery Mount Vernon was the first and the largest of the batteries at Fort Hunt. It was completed in 1898 and supported three 8-inch breech loading disappearing guns with a range of 8 miles. They were called disappearing guns because their recoil energy was used to lower them down below the protective walls. When they were reloaded they would be raised back above the walls to fire.

Looking down the length of Battery Mount Vernon, one of the batteries to the left.

Looking out at a battery of Battery Mount Vernon.

Turning away from the battery, towards the rest of the fort.

Looking out of Battery Mount Vernon to the rest of Fort Hunt Park.

Gated off rooms at the lower level of Battery Mount Vernon. Nothing can escape graffiti these days.

Battery Mount Vernon was the most interesting to photograph, as it was the largest and most complex of the structures. You can’t go inside any of these structures (they were closed off to protect the public from the asbestos and other chemicals in use at the time), but it has a lot of interesting elements along the outside. I created a few more artistic photographs of Battery Mount Vernon, including An Eye to the Battery, Facing Down the Tower, and Stepping From the Dark.

Battery Commander’s Station

The Battery Commander’s Station is the tower to the right. Battery Mount Vernon is on the left.

The Battery Commander’s Station was a tower used to observe the Potomac River and direct fire at oncoming ships. It could also be used to signal Fort Washington across the river in Maryland.

I’ve visited Fort Hunt Park a couple times now. It is a small park and easy to see in a short span of time. Of course, with the photographic opportunities of the batteries it would also be easy to spend many hours here. I hope to return during different seasons to see how the scenery around the batteries change. Perhaps I’ll update this page in the future with any new photographs I create.

I wouldn’t necessarily plan a long trip just to visit Fort Hunt Park. But if you’re in the area, or interested in history, it’s well worth the visit if time permits. It is easy to get to, right off the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and is open year-round from sunrise to sunset. If you visit leave a comment below and let me know what you thought of the park and its old fortifications.

Originally posted May 7, 2019. Updated March 2, 2020.

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Turn Any Lens Into a Wide Angle Using Stitched Panoramas /  by Todd Henson

You’re walking around town and you’ve only brought a 50 mm lens. You know this can limit what you photograph, and that can be a good thing, forcing you to think more creatively.

Then you stumble across a great scene that is just too expansive to capture with 50 mm. You don’t have a wide angle lens with you. You can’t move back enough to get everything in the frame. What do you do? Move on, accepting your limitation? Maybe. But perhaps better still is to think more creatively and realize you can use your 50 mm lens to create a stitched panorama of the wide angle scene.

If you’re unfamiliar with stitched panoramas, the idea is to create multiple images, each overlapping the next. When you get home you can use software, such as Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, or others, to merge all the images together into a finished photograph that captures more of the scene than a single image at that focal length could.

Handheld Stitched Pano Using 3 Images

3 Image stitched panorama of the Washington Monument.

Washington, DC is full of subjects worth photographing. One of these is the Washington Monument on the National Mall. In this case you may be able to move back enough to capture the wider view, but perhaps doing so would alter the perspective too much. If so, try creating a stitched pano as I’ve done here.

The 3 photos that were combined into the final stitched panorama.

You can see in the sample photos I created 3 vertical images. Look closely and you can see each image overlaps a bit with the next image. This is important to give the software enough information to properly stitch them together.

The 3 images in Adobe Lightroom.

I imported the images into Adobe Lightroom and selected all 3. I right-clicked to bring up the menu and chose Photo Merge. From within this I selected Panorama.

Panorama Merge Preview window in Adobe Lightroom.

This brought up the Panorama Merge Preview window, where Lightroom shows a preview of the stitched photo. The first thing you’ll want to do is choose which Projection to use: Spherical, Cylindrical, or Perspective. I won’t get into technical details here because it’s easy to just click on each one and see what effect they have on your photo. I most often use the default Projection Lightroom chooses, but sometimes I find a different one works better.

After you’ve chosen a Projection, notice how there is some white space around the edges of the photo. This is because I was handholding the camera and didn’t perfectly line everything up. This can also happen when using a tripod, but it will happen more often when you handhold. It’s not a problem, though.

Lightroom’s Boundary Warp control set to the full amount.

Notice the Boundary Warp control. It starts off with a value of 0, meaning no boundary warp. If you slide the control towards the right you will see the image begin to warp, removing the white space. Effectively, Lightroom is stretching parts of the photo to make it fit into the image space without the white space. This can distort parts of the photograph, but that’s not a problem with some photographs, those without a lot of straight lines or objects where you’d notice the change.

Lightroom’s Auto Crop option.

If you don’t want to use Boundary Warp because of how it distorts your image, you will need to crop the image to remove the excess white space. Lightroom has a checkbox called Auto Crop that will perform the crop for you. Just check the box and it automatically crops the image. Of course, you can always leave this box unchecked and manually crop the image yourself later.

When you’re finished click the Merge button, then sit back and wait for Lightroom to merge all the photographs into a single image. Once this is done you can make adjustments to the image as you usually do, adjusting exposure, color balance, contrast, and what not. Lightroom makes this entire process very easy.

Handheld Stitched Pano Using 4 Images

4 Image stitched panorama of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In this example I created a 4 image panorama using the same steps mentioned above. However, this scene included moving cars. I present it here to show what you may see from Lightroom when there is something moving in your scene. Note, there are more advanced techniques to take care of these things, but I want to present just the basics, to show how quickly and easily you can create your own panos

The 4 photos that were combined into the final stitched panorama. Notice the locations of the cars, some of which move from frame to frame.

In this scene there were a couple vehicles close to me that were moving, which appeared in multiple frames. There was also a red taxi in the background that moved from frame to frame. I used default settings in Lightroom and it produced the final image you saw above. Notice how it chose only one version of the foreground cars, but it actually shows 2 versions of the red taxi. We see the same car twice in the final image.

So be aware of moving objects. They can complicate creating a stitched pano, unless you’re ok with how the software chooses what to show, or you use more advanced techniques/software to manually decide what to show.

Handheld Multi-level Stitched Pano Using 6 Images

6 Image multi-level stitched panorama of the Smithsonian Castle.

In the 2 examples above I held the camera vertically to create a longer horizontal image. In this example I want to show that you can also create multi-level panos. In this case I chose to hold the camera horizontally, but you could also hold it vertically.

The 6 photos that were combined into the final stitched panorama. Lightroom is capable of handling multiple levels when creating a larger panorama. Notice some are even titled, as I was hand holding.

I started by taking a photograph of the upper left of the Smithsonian Castle. Then I panned to the right to photograph the upper middle of the building, and finally the upper right, each time overlapping some with the previous image. Then I moved the camera back to where I started on the left, but photographed the lower left of the building being sure to overlap some with the portion I’d photographed above. Then I panned to the right to photograph the lower middle, and finally the lower right. This created 6 images.

Please note, this isn’t a great photograph. It wasn’t the right time of day to photograph this scene, as the sun was above and behind this scene, which washed out the sky. But I wanted to capture the scene, and I wasn’t going to be there at a good time, so I did the best I could with the gear and skills I had at the time.

Once again, I imported everything into Lightroom, selected the 6 photos, worked through the options on the Panorama Merge Preview window, then made my usual adjustments after Lightroom had created the stitched pano. As you can see in the final image, the sky is still washed out, but I’m pleased I was able to capture the entirety of the building, something I just couldn’t do with my 56 mm lens.

In The Field

Ok, so hopefully I’ve convinced you stitched panos can be another great tool in your bag. If so it’s time to get out there and try creating some of your own. But before you do, here are some tips to make your life, and Lightroom’s, a little easier.

  • Take all of your camera’s exposure settings out of auto. Manually choose the white balance, aperture and shutter speed. The reason is you don’t want these settings changing from frame to frame, something that would make it more difficult to merge them into a single photo.

  • Set the camera to manual focus mode and focus on whatever is most important to you. The key is you don’t want the camera autofocusing on each frame as it can result in different things being in focus in different frames, which can make stitching more difficult.

  • If it’s a very wide scene you may have to compromise on your exposure settings. One side of the scene may be much darker than another side. In that case expose for the part of the scene that is most important to you, generally something in the middle range, and let the rest fall where it may.

  • Use a tripod if you have it. This will make it easier to line things up and keep the camera steady, reducing the amount you have to crop out later.

  • Use a bubble level if you have it, or a digital level in the camera if yours has one. This will help you keep things level and lined up.

  • If you don’t have a tripod, don’t worry. You can still hand hold your camera. All the photos in this post were handheld. Try to hold your camera as steady as you can. Face the middle of the scene, then pivot your body towards the left. Steady yourself. Line it up as well as you can. Create your first image. Then slowly pivot your body towards the right, making sure the next image overlaps the previous image by a decent amount. Stop moving, steady yourself, take the next image. Keep repeating this, pivoting towards the right between each image. Always be sure to steady yourself before clicking the shutter button. You don’t want your movement to create a blurry image.

That’s the basics of what you need to know. You can use almost any kind of camera to do this. In fact, many cell phones have apps that will automatically create a longer pano image as you pan the phone across the scene.

So head out there and give it a try. Let me know how it goes, and pass on any tips you have.

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