April 2025.
Lihue, Hawaii.

In a future Travel Tuesday, I’ll share photos of our Kauai Safari through the 105-acre (0.42 Sq Km) Kilohana Plantation. On the tour, I learned more about their rum products and the agricultural products they raise. More importantly for this post, I learned a trick from the photographer who took our photo as we sipped on our Mai Tais at the base of a large banyan tree. Our driver, Tiny, took several pictures of the guests who requested them. As I reviewed the photos he took for Lynn and me, I “went to school” on his images.

Before I share the trick below, here’s a bit about banyan trees and their introduction to Hawaii. Banyan trees originate from South Asia, particularly India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The first banyan tree in Hawaii was introduced in 1873 by William Hillebrand, a German physician, who brought it from India. Since then, banyan trees have become a part of Hawaii’s landscape, despite being non-native. Their sprawling canopies and aerial roots have made them iconic features across the islands.

The banyan tree in Lahaina, on the island of Maui, holds a special place in Hawaiian history and culture. It is the largest banyan tree in the United States, spanning nearly two-thirds of an acre. Its historical significance is tied to the 50th anniversary of Lahaina’s first Christian mission. The tree was heavily damaged in the 2023 wildfire that devastated Lahaina. It’s been given extra care and is showing signs of recovery.

About the photo: Lynn handed Tiny her Samsung S22 cell phone, and he quickly snapped several pictures. I was most impressed with the image above. He used the panorama mode to create the vertical panorama. I rarely use panorama mode on my cell phone; instead, I prefer to take two or more overlapping exposures and use Lightroom Classic or Luminar Neo to stitch the images together.

The “trick” he taught is simple: Put the camera in landscape orientation and do a vertical pan instead of a horizontal pan. I might use this mode occasionally to include a more complete view of large objects like the banyan tree in the background.

One reason I rarely use the cellphone panorama mode is that when capturing the entire scene, the camera must sweep continuously and at a constant speed. Inconsistent speed creates proportion errors. In this photo, the image out of the camera was slightly out of proportion at the bottom of the photo, and our bodies appeared shorter and broader than natural. The aspect ratio was easily fixed using the Aspect slider in Adobe Lightroom Classic’s Transform tool. I adjusted the slider to give us a more natural appearance (and I appeared to lose 15 pounds in the bargain! >grin<). This problem doesn’t occur in multiple-image panorama stitching.

The only other tweaks I made were in Luminar Neo. I used the Supersharp tool as the image from the camera appeared slightly out of focus. I then used the Erase tool to remove a portion of the canopy’s roof over the nearby deck. It intruded somewhat into the upper left corner of the photo. Finally, I used Accent AI to improve the contrast and clarity of the image. Click on the picture to view the metadata and the image in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner