Christine spent two days “in the village” – a day with Phil doing landscape photography followed by a day with Rachel covering creative photography. (This does not mean we could not be creative on the landscape day, obviously!)

This is a panorama stitched from 8 pictures taken on the sands by Christine. The pictures were taken in portrait orientation to minimise the distortion of the wide angle lens.

The trick here is to choose the most important part of the image, and make sure it’s exposed correctly (using Av in this case, but it could have been M, P or even an automatic mode like landscape or sports). Then set the camera to M, and use the settings from that first image. This will prevent the sky mysteriously changing mid-panorama. Some cameras (especially Canon) have auto-panorama settings, but these lock the settings on the first image. Often this is the most or least exposed image rather than the average from the centre.

Also, be aware that auto white balance, ISO or anything else may change during the panorama.

However, if there’s not much change across the image, auto stitch works fine – young James took this one at Chatsworth:

The adult photography courses we’re doing for the National Trust still have places available (20th May, £30). Check it out on the NT blog:

http://stourheadnt.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/photography-made-simple-course-thursday-20th-may-10am-to-4pm/

We had a great day (with great weather) at Chatsworth House on Sunday. A mixed group including James, who we’d allowed along for free provided that his dad Paul provided his lunch and entry. We try to do this when we can – we do our best to inspire children in photography and the pictures they take are always interesting.

We taught two courses in one day – Phil’s group did DSLR, and Rachel’s group did Creative photography – here are some pictures from the DSLR group including some from James:

James in action, taken by his dad.

Droplets, taken by James on his little Fuji finepix.