How to Shoot a Vertical Panorama With Your iPhone

If you’ve ever wanted to capture a vertical panorama, I’m going to show you how. Most of us might remember them from our high school picture days, when a photographer would make everyone stand still for a while to take a horizontal panoramic photograph of the class. Or perhaps you enjoyed John Martellaro’s panorama of the Park Meadows Mall Apple Store. That’s the “normal” way of taking a panorama – horizontally, producing a very wide image.

This iPhone photographer desperately needs to read this tip on how to shoot a vertical panorama with his iPhone (Image Credit: Pexels)

Taking a Vertical Panorama in iOS

It turns out, you can do the same thing, but vertically, if you know this trick. This will give you a really tall picture, allowing you to capture things like the full height of a tree, for instance. All you have to do is turn on Pano mode on your iPhone, then rotate your device 90 degrees. You turn your iPhone like you were taking a landscape photo, tap the shutter button, and then move your iPhone upwards.

A “normal” photograph taken of the tree in my side yard

From the same location and zoom, a vertical panorama of the tree in my side yard

Just like that, you’ll have a vertical panorama instead of a “normal” image that leaves out the top or bottom of your subject. It opens up a whole new world of photography.

How Else Could I Use Vertical Panoramas?

Think about it. The Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and tall redwood trees won’t typically fit in the horizontal frame of your camera. To really capture them in all their glory, you can either move very far away and get almost no detail … or you can take a vertical panorama.

If you want to learn even more about vertical panoramas, or vertoramas, as they’re called, head over to Peter West Carey’s excellent article about this format. You’ll learn more about what vertoramas are and other reasons you might want to start shooting in this new format. While capturing images of tall objects are the obvious choice, Mr. Carey offers some fantastic vertoramas that showcase even more ways you can use this technique.

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