Brenizer Method Series

The Brenizer method is a technique that creates unique photos that exhibit a wide angle with a shallow depth of field (focus), using Panorama-stitching techniques to compile the images into one collage. The whole series really felt special to me because I often focus on composition and positioning in my portraiture and photography in general, but in this project I never knew what an image looked like until after it is stitched together back home.

The following were each created with a range of 20-60 photos, stitched together, cropped and edited.

View My Artist Statement

Raw Collages

I sometimes cannot decide between what is the "final form" that this series should have- the cropped, edited photos above or the true Brenizer collages below. Some ahve been edited for my end-of-semester gallery, and others are raw.

Step 1

Using your choice of portrait or zoom lens, take photos in expanding spirals to cover as much of the scene as you can. In my case, for this photo I took 44 photos using a 50mm prime lens.

Be sure to keep the camera settings and lens on manual, in order to keep the focal distance and lighting the same consistency throughout. If you are outdoors, however, clouds come and go and may mess with the colors between images.

Step 2

Use Photoshop's "Photomerge" feature to layer images together.

Step 3

The "Photomerge" feature will automatically create masks to more seamlessly blend the layers together.

Step 4

Optionally, you can edit photos to a more traditional cropping and framing. In my case, I kept the panorama-like aspect ratio to create this final composition.

Step 5

Edit the final image to fit your style.