Panoramas of France

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While traveling through southern France, as a little side project I took panoramas of some of the landscapes we visited. I did this mostly because the panorama is a great tool to describe a large amount of land and grandiose feeling you get from seeing it. I put together 6 panoramas with photoshop, of the different areas I visited. The first panorama is of Bonnieux the Grand Luberon mountains behind it. I took this while coming back from a hike through the woods near Lacoste. As you can there is a lot of farmland and Bonnieux is a great example of the villages on the hill side, as it is incredibly common for this area of Provence. On the right side of this photo it is a little stretched, I didn’t crop this out because it reminded me of the motion blur of moving your head to see something. The second panorama is smaller because it only used three images to create it. On a different hike, I went around to the backside of Lacoste and found this nice viewing spot; I think you can see Lumieres and Gordes from here. You can certainly see Mount Ventoux with its snowcap. There is a great depth in this photo and you can see the various levels of atmospheric perspective. The next little panorama is of the only pass through the Luberon, as seen from Forte de Buoux. There is a lot of rock climbing areas in this region and there are few residents in the valley. It is really neat to see the rock layers in this photo. The fourth panorama is my second favorite panorama; I saved the best for last. Here you can see Bonnieux on the right and Lacoste on the left. I like this photo because of the rich green and foggy atmosphere. This was taken on our way back from a hike through the Cedar Forest with Forest (our photo professor). I seem to be hiking a lot. The fifth panorama is a neat one; it’s of the Rhone River looking from the Palais des Papes gardens. This is a fun photo because you can see the medieval fortresses throughout the new city area in Avignon. And last but not least, the panorama from Opede. Opede is really beautiful, it is an old village but it hasn’t been lived in since the 1920’s and is almost entirely ruins. There is a beautiful Chateau at the top, which is just entirely ruins and you can climb all over them. I’m not sure of the area this panorama is looking over but I especially like the play of light and clouds you can see in the valley. This was a fun little side project, and photoshop makes it so easy now.