Depending on when you’re visiting, Kim and I are either doing last minute prep for our trip to London and Paris or we’re on the plane making our way across the pond.

This is my second trip to Europe but my first to Paris and it’s Kim’s first trip outside the US aside from several trips to Niagara Falls.

I’ve scheduled a number of posts to go up over the next few days while we’re away including another edition of Geographic Composition on Thursday and guest bloggers working on Monday’s P&P Weekly.

There’s WiFi in our Paris hotel and I may get a chance to post some images but I can’t promise anything.

I saw these two posts on Friends-of-the-Blog Scott Kelby and Terry White’s blogs today. I know Terry’s is a joke, but the one Scott talks about is very well done.

We just finished up another high school show over the weekend and are in the process of setting up for another one today. So, in order to give myself a little recovery time - especially given opposing home schedules these two weeks - I decided to delay this week’s P&P Weekly for a day or two. Also, be sure to stop back on Friday for the next edition of Geographic Composition!

In the meantime pop over to a couple of great sources for Photoshop and photography humor.

The first is What the Duck by Friend-of-the-Blog Aaron Johnson. WTD is a daily comic strip designed specifically for photographers, Photoshop users, and even small business owners and it pokes fun at clients, those who don’t know enough to know that they don’t know, and the everyday ridiculousness of life. I read his strips every day and they’re a great “pick me up” after a long day.

For the next one,  I know I’m late in posting this and you’ve probably already seen these, but for those of you who haven’t, check out the “You Suck at Photoshop” video series. If you’re looking for good, in-depth tutorials on how to create effects in Photoshop, look elsewhere. For some excellent Dane Cook-style humor, “warped” into a Photoshop tutorial, this is your place! (The link takes you to Episode #1 (0f 8). )

Today, in addition to being my 27th birthday, Kim and I are headed down to NYC for the weekend as our Christmas present to each other. One of our friends, Beth, is going on a cruise for the first time and is letting us use her house just outside of the city (Thanks Beth!). We’re going to be taking in the American Museum of Natural History, the Empire State Building, and the MoMA (home of Kim’s favorite painting) during our days and will be going to see RENT on Broadway Saturday night!

Some notes about the blog, Geographic Composition will continue. The other contributors and I have been talking about how to reshape the project (slightly) to make it more do-able for all of us given our hectic schedules and to make it a more helpful tool as we develop our individual skills. We are moving to a twice-a-month schedule and our next installment should occur on the 15th.

The P&P Weekly has been on hold for the holidays and is not likely to be up before Monday the 14th because of a lack of time to put it together - it takes a little over an hour of going through everyone’s posts. I’d like to hear some of your thoughts on “The Weekly” and perhaps some suggestions for how to make it more useful to you or better overall.

I’ve gotten some good feedback about the new video feature for the blog. I’ve only put up two so far and I’m really enjoying it. Check out my YouTube Channel to view my videos as they are created and let me know if there are videos you’d like to see me do or if you have any Photoshop questions/techniques/tutorials that you’d like to see me create a video about.

That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great weekend!

I saw over on Friend-of-the-Blog Jeff Revell’s site a link to a gallery of panoramic photos turned into surreal planets. And Geographic Composition contributor Mike Palmer also used this technique for last Friday’s submission. I had seen the same tutorial he mentioned a while back but never tried it for myself until now.

So, as a quick break from the Profile Reflections, here’s what I did using my Rochester Pano from the other week:

1. Create a panoramic photo by either stitching together a number of shots or by cropping a landscape image. Be sure to maintain a minimum of 2:1 width to height ratio.

2. Make sure that both the sky and the bottom section of the image match pretty well to avoid a really noticeable seam.

3. Make sure the horizon line is perfectly, well, horizontal. This, again, helps everything line up easier.

4. With your pano open, go to Image>Image Size and uncheck the box next to “contrain proportions” and make your height the same value as the width. Click “Ok.”

5. Rotate your canvas 180 degrees.

6. Go to Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates and select the “Rectangular to Polar” option and click “Ok.”

7. Rotate the image to your liking. I just flipped it back 180 degrees.

8. Clean up any evidence of the seam. I actually replaced the bridge on the right side with the one on the left to make it look better and then did a bunch of patching and healing and masking in the center and along the seam at the bottom of the planet to make it all fit.

9. Because my pano wasn’t shot properly in the first place, my sky was a mess. So, I simply made a mask of the planet and placed a better sky behind it.

It’s a really cool idea and one I’m definitely going to try again. Give it a try and let me know what you come up with!