This weekend’s outing brought us to Pomponio Beach State on the California coast, about an hour south of San Francisco. It was sunny going over the mountains towards the coast, but the summer weather pattern prevailed and it was overcast at the beach. It was 69 degrees, which is not enough to deter beach goers accustomed to the pattern. It is in fact an official state refuge for weasels, but don’t let that put you off.

I took a pair of images that showed gray-weather activity at the beach.

I was trying to get the woman walking down the path, the kite fliers flying kites, and a car traveling on the road, all captured for a stitched panorama. It’s important to have a zone at the frame edges with no motion so that the stitching can occur successfully. You can see the quiet region in the adjoining edges of the frames. One of the major hazards for stitched panoramas is moving water, but that was not a problem here as the waves were all near the left edge.

The stitching worked automatically, yielding

Here is the larger version of the image

One problem is a darkened area near the stitching. That can be improved with some more fussing in Photoshop. (The no-fuss principle only applies to taking the images, no to salvaging them later.) Alas, another problem lies nears the stitching zone. The two guys with white hats are actually the same person:

The man was walking quickly and had moved from one frame to the other as I repositioned the camera. I had been concentrating on catching the woman on the path before she walked out of the first frame. One might go back and attempt to retouch out one of the figures. The easier alternative is to comment how odd it is for twins of that age to be dressing alike.