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A Winter Walk for 2004, in the valley of the Blackhope Burn, off the Moffat Water in the Scottish Borders.

Here are some more panoramas, produced using the very wonderful and free panotools from Helmut Dersch

http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/

They aren't quick and they don't have a flashy front end, but they do a pretty good job, don't you think?

They can be set to deliver the stitched images as a set of layers and masks, allowing final editing in Photoshop to each image individually. This is particularly valuable to me when correcting exposure values between images.

5: Approaching Saddle Yoke: Panotools has stitched the two images together down the middle of the ridge in the mid-ground, showing Dave in a different pose. Direct comparison of the two versions here.
9 Downhill Now: A fine job by panotools, but needing extensive editing. The left and center pics were stitched across Dave's image: by modifying the mask I made him whole again! The right-hand image has so much depth of field that it has been tilted quite a lot to fit, a sort of semi-fisheye effect. Much fiddling has gone on in the lower right corner. Direct comparison here.
11 Coomb Craig A lot of exposure variation (the lefthand image is almost into-the-sun) made the colour matching difficult. Panotools has done a very good job of stitching the three images together. Direct comparison here.
12 Blackhope Valley: There are now five images in this panorama, covering about 180 degrees. The right-hand image is overexposed compared to all the others. Panotools has done a very good stitching job, leaving me the final colour matching to do in Photoshop. Direct comparison here.

1. The view of the Blackhope Valley from our start point, by Blackshope. From foreground to background, the peaks in view are Saddle Yoke, Under Saddle Yoke and Hartfell Rig.
2. Looking up the valley to see the rain coming down to meet us. Fortunately it didn't last for long; just long enough to prompt everybody to don overtrousers.
3. This conveys the speed and enthusiasm applied to the first part of the climb, knowing as we did that it contained the major part of the days ascent . . .
4 . . . and this is about halfway up. Speed and enthusiasm are a little blunted now.
5. From the same point as the last shot, the shoulder of Saddle Yoke, looking at the peaks. Hart Fell and Falcon Craig are still in cloud, although it has stopped raining. Its getting ready to hail/snow on us instead. Stitched together from two shots, taken from the same place but the auto-exposure system has made the pictures difficult to merge cleanly.
6. A panorama from the top of Saddle Yoke. Under Saddle Yoke (which is higher) is ahead, Cape Law and the valley of the Carrifran Burn on the right. This is a poor effort at stitching together three shots, but I moved in between them! The lower picture is saved at a lower resolution, to allow the whole panorama to fit into a browser window.
Here are the three shots individually; are they better on their own?
7. The lunch spot, by Whirly Gill, out of the wind and next to running water. Hound Bank is visible in the distance
8. This is the fence on top of Hart Fell, which stayed in cloud nearly all day. The disadvantage of eating lunch at the bottom of a climb is that you get slowed up while you digest it - or at least I did. So there are no photos of the climb up Hartfell Rig.
9. A slightly better panorama, with four shots in it. Falcon Craig, Swatte Fell and Hound Bank on the right, the Saddle Yokes on the left with Carrifran Gans beyond and the east side of the Moffat valley in the background. We are just under the cloudbase.
10. Looking across to the Saddle Yokes from Falcon Craig.
11. Three shots in this panorama of Coomb Craig, showing what looks like the remains of a cornice This is from the unnamed small summit above Hound Bank.
12. Pushing my graphic editing skills to the limit, this wide (120º) panorama of the Blackhope valley is made from four shots. From right to left we have the shoulder of Hound Bank, Falcon Craig, Hartfell Rig then the Saddle Yokes on the north side. All taken from a natural stance that juts out of Hound Bank a little below the summit. Irresistable. Hart Fell is now out of cloud . . . quick, lets go back!
13. And this is the stance showing just how attractive it was!
14. Dramatic shot of Dave and the Saddle Yoke twins beyond.
15. This shot from earlier in the walk shows Hound Bank and Black Craig from the shoulder of Saddle Yoke. The stance can just be seen, below and to the left of the summit of Black Craig where the slope levels out briefly.
16. Heading down a farm track to Cappelgill after a steep knee-testing descent, dog-legging to avoid the Hang Gill gully. It is almost sunset and we are weary. The Cappelgill collies gave us a good shouting-at.
17. The view of St. Mary's Loch from the Tibbie Shiels Inn, very well placed to act as a source of anesthetic for tired legs. But we did get down in daylight :)
A guide to the locations of these photographs