The Gulf State Pier, Panoramic

I've always been a little bit frustrated by my own shots of this pier, The Gulf State Pier.   

I think I finally have one, here, that I like.

Watching Flickr, G+, I see these beautiful shots of this and other piers.  People are just so much more talented than I am in composition, lighting,.. having "the eye."

My shots have always had the wrong light, shot mid-day, or at night with not enough light.   Too crowded, blue sky- no clouds.  Wrong Angle, wrong f-stop.   It's always something! :)

Not to mention that, architecturally, it is my opinion that the covered area at the foot of this pier, is kinda horrendous.   I mean, it probably isn't "that bad" but the surroundings are always so gorgeous that it strikes me as a bit of an eyesore, even compared to the rest of the pier, which is built quite well.   Alas, I know this covered area offers necessary amenities, a ticket office, restrooms, a place from which state park employees can tell at me from above "Get out of the water!!!"  (Standing in 1/2 inch surf, snapping shots)

I decided to try a few "different' things this go around.     

One, was to get a good ways back, frame the pier, as you would typically do, with the end near center, phi or a third.  Then, I shifted the camera up, wayyyyyy up.. so that the pier only inhabited the very bottom of the viewfinder.

The result looked really cool in preview but is kinda "meh" on my monitor.    I think with a wide angle, that should would have been better.  I'm still tweaking that image, maybe I can recover it for a post, later.  Not sure..  

It did give me an idea for a future experiment, though.   Shoot the pier, mostly sky, lone, small trail of pier at the bottom.   Then plop down in the sand and wait for the stars to come up.   Take the same shot with the starfield and mix the two shots.   Dunno -- I may try that when I have a little more time!

It occurred to me, on this trip, that maybe one issue, compositionally, was that I couldn't get "wide enough".   So, I went panoramic.    The geometric distortion is really obvious, even after I warped alot of it back into place, but I think it adds a sort of "mystique" to the image.

This thing is nearly 10,000 pixels wide.   Go large on the view :)

Of all my shots of this particular pier, I think this is the only one (of mine) that deserves to stand alongside the wonderful shots from other photographers before me that have captured it so very well!

I finally got one I thought looked pretty cool, yay!