The Okanagan is filled with sweeping picturesque vistas, but capturing the grandness of the vision has always been a challenge for artists, especially photographers, who are usually limited by the format of their cameras.

One Summerland photographer, however, has taken up that challenge. Blending up to 40 separate images into a single composite, John Barber creates panoramas that reflect the immensity of the views.

Starting Nov. 5, Leir House in Penticton will be showing a exhibition of Barber’s work, starting with an opening reception from 7-9 p.m. The show continues until Dec. 18, open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Barber got his start with panoramas in 2001, when he began work for an Ontario company that was using panoramic photography for real estate companies, creating virtual tours of homes on the market.

“I just started experimenting with doing it more for artistic purposes and doing landscape-type panoramas,” said Barber. “I started getting really good feedback from that. A lot of people really liked what I was doing, so I just continued with that and started making them bigger and bigger.”

The largest of the prints Barber will be exhibiting at Leir House measures 78 inches wide, though that’s far from the largest he’s ever done. That honour goes to a panorama of Sun-Oka beach he created for Bongarde Media, measuring 15 feet wide and 66 inches tall.

Barber said subject matter covers a wide range, though he does like to get up high, in places where he can get a good view.

“Usually I’m up high. I climb up mountainsides or whatever, where I can get an overview of an area, like the top of Giant’s Head or Munson mountain, places like that,” Barber said. “Anywhere it’s a real nice scene, but you need more than a wide-angle lens to take it all in.”

Barber said he has experimented with super wide lenses and other single shot panorama systems, but didn’t like the distortions inherent in that way of working.

“By shooting multi-shot panoramas, where I take 30 or 40 pictures and blend them all together, I’m able to keep everything true — the horizon doesn’t curve because of the shape of the lens, or the corners aren’t distorted by the shape of the lens,” said Barber.

It’s taken a lot of trial and error to get to this stage — panoramic photography isn’t something you can find many courses in — and Barber has had to educate himself.

“There’s other panoramic photographers out there around the world that I communicate with a little bit and get little tidbits of information here and there,” he said. “But the best teacher has been trying it, trying to blend them together, seeing how it works and then, if it doesn’t work, going out again and trying something a little bit different.”