In my posts on Campbell Island Teal and Gamming Southern Royal Albatross I showed a couple of landscape images from the top of the Col Lyall boardwalk. The image above is a view in the opposite direction showing the typical Campbell Island palette of tussock and dracophyllum colours punctuated by white albatross beneath grey skies.

The above photo is from approximately the same point but looking to the right and down the boardwalk toward Perseverance Harbour and Beeman Hill, Mount Lyall rising to the left. Mount Honey under cloud across the harbour.

A normal 2×3 aspect ratio frame doesn’t do justice to the sweep of the landscape so stitched panoramas are a temptation. Compact cameras and smart phones often do an amazing job of this but I prefer to stitch SLR frames for the improved resolution and thus detail available.

Ideally for this type of photo a tripod and levelling head is used. This is completely impractical in this environment unless stitched panoramas are your only goal. I find handheld images with 30-50% overlap give me enough to data to assemble a decent final image. The crucial part is to lock in manual exposure so that there is no variation between frames which can then be batch processed in Lightroom before panorama assembly.

These high resolution panoramas are of limited use for web display but are made with a view to large wall prints. The detail available reveals numerous albatross both on nest and in flight.

This final image was taken lower down the boardwalk and shows the beautifully wind-sculpted vegetation that evokes the impression of a manicured garden. A pity that the Ross Lilies weren’t in peak condition this time.

All photos with Nikon D850 and Nikon 24-120mm f4VR lens.