Panoramic

The aim of this project is to: "stitch together a consecutive selection of images to convey or suggest a type of narrative".


A panorama is a wide angle view of a physical space, directly encompassing the issue of time. It involves assembling images together to create a stretch of the scene before the viewer, showing everything in presence between two points. This project will involve the basics as well as my increasing experience, knowledge and application of Photoshop, as well as the process behind stitching my images together to create my own effective panoramic.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photographer [1] - Will Pearson

Upstream to Westminster

"The opportunity to capture these images is a privilege and sometimes an obsession" 

Will Pearson is a professional London-based panoramic photographer. I particularly like the abstractness of his images - they are cityscapes and therefore bombarded with a mixture of tall buildings which encompass a variety of geometric shapes. We get an overall impact of a city, from the vast overlook that stretches out towards other cities to significant architectural detail that makes a city what it is - all as a panorama so we get more information about that place.

Photographer [2] - Joannes Hepp

Taken from the series 'The Days After', German photograher Joannes Hepp presents us with  graphic stories in panoramic format to reiterate moments before, during and after a terrorist attack. This one is in Tokyo and is probably my favourite one of his because of the bold red. I'm not sure whether this is a metaphoric symbol in itself, maybe to do with the Japanese flag (red dot in the middle) or a representation of blood and gore from such horrific events. The stretch reveals everyone at peace, people in different areas of the photo work with each other without knowing so - for example, they're all wearing black suits, probably on their way to work. As a panorama it 'reinforces the on-going narrative'.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photoshop File Formats - knowing which format to use...


Photoshop PSD - "Photoshop Document" - Photoshop's native file and is probably the most important. Not only is it considered the 'standard' file format, it is also one of the only file types that supports the features we get from Photoshop. The advantage is if you save a file under the PSD format, all the layers will remain so that when you open it up again, you can continue editing from where you left off. Sometimes however, they are very large file sizes.


JPEG - "Joint Photographic Expert Group" has been around for almost 20yrs. It is by far the most popular and widely used file type for viewing and sharing digital photos. Nearly all digital cameras nowadays give you the option to shoot in JPEG or RAW, though essentially if you shoot in JPEG, a lot of information will be lost. This is because it compresses the image - it can do so until about 10% of it's original file size. If you don't mind loss of detail then that is fine, but JPEG's are better for uploading onto photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and Facebook as it is so easy. You don't want ugly artefacts to ruin the effect of your image.


TIFF - "Tagged Image File Format" - again (like PSD), one of the only formats that support the features on Photoshop. It is a 'lossless' format and the best to use to maintain the quality of an image as well as not taking up a lot of memory space. It is the standard for saving high quality images and storing information on colour dimensions - predominantly used in commercial printing.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Panorama

For my panorama, I decided to do my bedroom because there is a personal essence to it. This was only practice as I need to include something to show that it is a narrative, but I think the result it really effective; it's interesting to see what your own 360^o perspective of a room looks like as a single stretch. The top panorama is a merge of 6 photos, the bottom is 9 photos and shows my entire room. The only problem is that I shot this in landscape, forgetting to tilt the camera to a portrait so as there would be more in the frame; meaning you'd see the floor and ceiling too to get an idea of the perimeters. 


Different Types of Stitching


(I tested these, but cannot find my examples! Will re-do at a later stage)


After considering the issues with my first attempt, I re-shot it so that the camera was tilted portrait way up; this way I could get more in the frame and it will be more accurate when stitched together. This is my result:

To ensure there was a narrative in my work, I decided to have my sister stand in my room. Whilst it's suggestive that she is out of place and not meant to be there, this is actually completely relevant to a fear I used to have of something being in my room. I went through a phase where I was adamant my room was haunted, so I am using her to reflect that spiritual-ness.. a phobia is an example of reification, therefore she is the metaphorical element. The editing process involved: flatten image > crop > auto colour > curves (strong contrast). I wanted it to be very contrasty to emphases everything about it, particularly the shadows as this makes it seem more of a 'dark' environment. Another thing I like about it, is that it isn't completely in focus - there is a blurry sense to it which represents the blurriness of the situation, you cannot see these 'spirits' if they do exist, so the blurriness represents an uncorrected vision or the fact that it is not actually there. To improve, I would have liked to change the opacity of the figure so that it contributes to the concept I have outlined. There are also some areas that haven't been lined up properly, so I think I would take greater care in photographing, maybe by capturing each from that is less than 50% overlap.