During a recent engagement session I had the privilege of capturing this moment with one of our couples.  They rented the rowboats in Central Park, and paddled around a bit giving Jen and I so many amazing images to work with.  This particular shot was all about the kiss in the boat to me.  Therefore I knew the composition I wanted in my head and took the necessary photos to build in in photoshop afterwards.   Shooting this with a 10mm wide angle lens, it still didn’t capture the essence that is the Bow Bridge and the Lake.  Therefore I shot a series of 7 photos to merge into a panorama.

Here are the 7 photos straight out of the camera.

After merging them in Photoshop, below is the result.

Then the fun part began.  I knew right away that I wanted to get rid of all the other boaters.  So I did.  Then I wanted to get rid of the people on the bridge, on the park benches, etc.   Then once they were the only one’s left in the lake, I wanted to work on the landscaping.  Primarily I just filled in some gaps in the trees, etc.  Then removed the tree branches to the left of the frame.   Last piece was to find the right crop.  I cropped it about 6 times until I got the right dimensions that I felt brought out all the impact and majesty of this iconic scene.  Finally treating the photo with a vintage washed out tin print effect gave it all the classic drama and structure I wanted.  Here is the final result.

Click on the photo to view a larger version of it.

Enjoy!  (Time spent on this was approximately 30 minutes for you techies)