I especially like some of Bauer's images, but what do you see in these images that you don't already do yourself?

<<what do you see in these images that you don't already do yourself?>>

Well.... where should I start?

Specially with Dez Santana's work, it is;

the light
the composition
the richness of the colors
the sharpness of the image
the feel for the moment

Some of these is not a matter of not knowing how to do it as much as a matter of being able to recognize when they happen: having just the correct light, or the right spot where to shoot from.

Here is an analogy for you baseball fans: you can be a great hitting instructor and not be able to hit a 40mph slow pitch.

When you are trying to capture the moment, you need to recognize the moment.

I'm working on it ... but I'm still not there ... if that makes any sense.

It makes total sense; I can appreciate "the moment" that others have captured in images, but I struggle with seeing it in my viewfinder.

Dez Santana's work looked lovely, but I only saw small sized examples so it was hard for me to judge. I thought you were referring to something about the "pano" technique when you were talking about having much to learn, rather than the other photographic elements.

Another recommended link to visit is Max Lyons Digital Image Gallery. He stitched a gigapixel image (over 1,000,000,000 pixels) which was exhibited in Las Vegas in 2004.To stitch the images he has develop his own program, PTAssembler, a front end GUI for the powerful Panorama Tools.