Experimenting with Panorama

My body of work is currently focused on the journey of the River Witham in Lincolnshire.  So far I think that my images have a leaning towards the picturesque.  At the moment I am not sure whether that is a good or a bad thing.  The picturesque has for decades been popular, a response to industrialisation and urbanisation, and people such as William Gilpin wrote guidebooks to visit 'Picturesque Britain' in the 1700s.  David Bate tells us, in Photography: The Key Concepts, that picturesque views give us an idealised view of 'nature'.  He writes that we cling to the picturesque for the pleasure that it gives despite critics finding it to be appalling, cliched, trite or senseless.  Subconsciously, he says, people like picturesque images as 'good composition' reflects the composure and organisation that they would like to see in themselves.  Again he says that picturesque beauty is despised and maligned as a 'too easy pleasure'.  In contrast the sublime is considered to be more radical and interesting.  Towards the end of his chapeter on Landscape Bate writes that panoramas show the vast magnitude of 'nature' and the miniscule details of that space that photography has the potential to record.  They create a massive spectacle, at once sublime in scale and information, yet diminishing in that spectators can feel miniscule in them  In view of this I have been keen to experiment with panoramas on the river.  I intend to take some from elevated view points such as a high bridge, the top of Tattershall Castle and the top of Boston Church Tower (Boston Stump) all of which overlook the river and the countryside surrounding it.  Boston Stump also has the interest in that it features in another poem about Lincolshire, this time a narrative one: The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire by Jean Ingelow.

I took the two panoramas below whilst walking along the river to Bardney Lock.  I took a single image to start as I liked the fact that I could see to Lincoln Cathedral on the skyline, but then thought that it would make a good panorama.  I made the first, but then after some consideration restitched the images cropped in from the left and with slightly more sky and foreground so that it is slightly less letterbox like.  I'm not sure which I prefer; possible the first as it reflects the ribbon-like nature of the river.