If I got one good thing out of this project, it was a skill set. After 20+ hours in front of a computer screen masking tiny chunks of sky from in between the girders of a crane (among other things), I now feel fairly confident in my photoshopping skills. I'm not saying I could do anything and everything with the program. I'm just saying that I've reached a level of confidence I'm pretty happy with.
As for the panorama itself, I guess I could take it or leave it. I think the photoshop perfectionism got to me toward the end, and what resulted was a formulaic composition that might have been found in a 17th century northern Renaissance alterpiece. The planes were overkill---a last minute addition at an obscenely late hour. I knew, even as I masked their vapor trails and oulined their pointy wings, that it was a mistake, and yet somehow I rode the perfectionist momentum towards mediocrity. I guess you could say I got another valuable lesson from this project: don't let photoshop second-guess your work for you! When you work in such detail, it's very easy to lose track of the work as a whole. Frankly, I was pretty disappointed with the tiny amount of ground that my photoshopping resulted in. Perhaps a dozen square inches out of a panorama that was 40 inches long. I have to admit: it looks pretty slick, but if I had to redo the assignment I would definitely go in a different direction.
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