Another Way

After my previous attempt at using a super wide lens, I thought I would try a different approach: using a less wide lens and stitch a vertical panorama. It seemed a good idea at the time, although not without a few issues. On my first attempts, I forgot to lock the exposure. I made the pano by tilting up the lens whilst on the tripod causing considerable distortion.

I tried a few approaches to stitching, first in LR, which didn't look good. Then in PS, the auto Photomerge option wasn't much better. I tried manually layering and warping, which kind of worked, but took too long. Then after comparing all the other Photomerge options, I settled on Reposition. There was some misalignment on the horizon which I fixed by brushing in from another layer and a bit of cloning.

All in all, rather frustrating, back to the drawing board.