Panography

Reflecting on yesterday’s tutorial with Holger Pooten, I decided to do some research into some photographers and artists that use panography within their work. There are many ways that a 360º panorama can be captured and displayed, some of which are inventive and particularly eye-catching.

Mareen Fischinger

Mareen Fischinger is a German photographer and has a passion for everything that involves photography. As well as being a photographer, Fischinger is also involved with photo production services for national and international clients, including art direction, casting, booking of make-up/hair & styling, location scouting and retouching services. Her panographic images caught my attention, not only because they are aesthetically beautiful but because they are abstract in their nature and they have made me think about the other ways in which I can approach my work when shooting a landscape scene.

© Mareen Fischinger

© Mareen Fischinger

© Mareen Fischinger

The first image reminds me of one of my own images that I shall be using for my final assessment. My image also contains office buildings which are similar in their architectural style and I also have a crane present within my image.

As I had some images with me during the Photoshop tutorial, Holger suggested that I played around with these to experiment working in a similar style. We kept the images in a sphere shape (in keeping with my stereographic images) but in hindsight I think that the experiment would have looked better laid out from left to right.

Experiment with Holger

Image created with the help of Holger Pooten. Images © Richard Brochu-Williams

Holger showed me new techniques and methods within Photoshop that will come in very useful for future experimentations & creations.

Sven Fennema

Whilst researching I came across another photographer & artist by the name of Sven Fennema. Sven has an interest in landscape and architectural photography and is inspired by the geometry of buildings, their shapes and their lines. I have noticed that on his website he has also included panoramic tours, this is something that I experimented with back in April this year but I was unable to upload the tour that I created to this blog.

© Sven Fennema

Virtual Tours

Virtual Tours 2

I have also looked into the work of David Hockney, who also has created landscapes from multiple images. Due to copyright I cannot post any of his work to this blog but his images can be viewed on his website.

What I like about the images that I have found during my investigation, is the fact that they are stitched together rather crudely and not seamlessly (with the exception of Sven Fennema) and in my opinion this adds to the aesthetic properties of the image and creates an illusion of texture. This is definitely a technique that I will be experimenting with in the future. It’s a shame that I do not have enough time to experiment with this technique fully at the present time, as I feel that I could have produced some good work from using these methods.

References

4rtgallery.blogspot.com, (2014). Simply Creative: Panography by Mareen Fischinger. [online] Available at: http://4rtgallery.blogspot.com/2013/06/panography-by-mareen-fischinger.html [Accessed 5 Aug. 2014].

Hockneypictures.com, (2014). DAVID HOCKNEY. [online] Available at: http://www.hockneypictures.com [Accessed 6 Aug. 2014].

Mareen Fischinger Fotografie, (2014). Mareen Fischinger Fotografie. [online] Available at: http://mareenfischinger.com/places/panography/ [Accessed 5 Aug. 2014].

Sven Fennema – Fine Art Photography | Panorama – Fotografie, (2012). 360° Panography. [online] Available at: http://www.sven-fennema.de/panography/ [Accessed 6 Aug. 2014].

Wikipedia, (2014). Panography. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panography [Accessed 6 Aug. 2014].

Seminar with Nick Galvin

Yesterday I feel, was a productive day, as we had a seminar with visiting lecturer Nick Galvin. After showcasing our work and ideas, we discussed how we could start thinking about the different ways that we could approach our Major Project in the next semester. As I am concentrating on landscape photography and the abstract, we discussed the various ways that this could be achieved and we looked at a diverse range of artists and their methodologies.

I researched more into a few of the artists that we discussed during the session and looked at the ways that they produced their landscape images in original and exciting ways.

Andreas Gefeller

I looked at Gefeller’s work entitled “Supervisions”. For these images, Gefeller employs a technically elaborate method to scan the surfaces of urban sites by means of long-term exposure and photographs from a different perspective (usually a birds eye view) and makes these images by using composites.

Untitled (# 2) Dusseldorf, 2013 © Andreas Gefeller

Untitled (Sand Tracks) Miami, 2008 © Andreas Gefeller

Untitled (Paving Slabs 2) Dresden, 2006 © Andreas Gefeller

Gefeller’s work is simplistic in its nature and has a real quality to it. I like these images due to the simplicity of them and I have an appreciation of the time and effort that it took to produce these works.

David Hockney

Due to the copyright and the notice displayed on the website, I have been unable to display any of David Hockney’s work here on my blog but I have provided a link where the work can be viewed. Hockney’s work that was of particular interest to me was the image entitled “Pearblossom Highway, 11th-18th April 1986” which is a photo collage. Like the work of Andreas Gefeller, it is made from a composite of images and shows a different way of capturing a landscape. The image can be viewed from this link: http://www.hockneypictures.com/works_photos.php.

Boyle Family

The Boyle Family are probably best known for their earth studies series of work. The work consists of three dimensional casts taken of the surface of the earth, which record and document random sites with great accuracy. These works combine real material from the site (stones, dust, twigs etc) with paint and resins, preserving the form of the ground to make unique one-off pieces that suggest and offer new interpretations of the environment. These have been displayed and when photographed, actually look like the “real” landscape.

Holland Park Avenue Study, London Series, 1967 and Cobbles Study, Lorrypark Series, 1976. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh 2003. © Boyle Family

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 2003. © Boyle Family

The Nyord (Denmark) World Series Study, installed at Galerie Paul Maenz, Koln 1971. © Boyle Family

The first image displaying the road and pavement is something that I find intriguing and you can certainly understand that when photographed from straight on, could be confused with being a true part of the landscape.

Space and astronomy is a subject that has always fascinated me from an early age. It’s amazing to think of our position within the known universe and to ponder whether or not there may be other forms of life out there in the vastness of space. I have been trying to think of different ways in which I could incorporate this interest into my photography and this is probably why I was first fascinated by the images created by photographer Alexandre Duret-Lutz and began to create such images. Like the world we live in, they have a mystical and magical quality to them.

Torre de Belém – Stereographic Projection
© Alexandre Duret-Lutz

This Stereographic Projection was created from the Equirectangular Panorama below.

Torre de Belém – Equirectangular Panorama
© Alexandre Duret-Lutz

I absolutely love the Stereographic Projection image. The image has been well shot and it somehow reminds me of being very classic in its nature. An image that I would certainly display.

Carrying on with the planetary theme I continued with my research.

Mishka Henner

I looked at “Astronomical, 2011” which displays our solar system in twelve volumes. The width of each page is a million kilometres. On page 1 the Sun can be seen and it continues until page 6,000 where we can see Pluto. As the Solar System is so vast in size (average distance from the Earth to the Sun is approximately 150 million kilometres) most of the pages appear black.

© Mishka Henner

© Mishka Henner

© Mishka Henner

© Mishka Henner

© Mishka Henner

© Mishka Henner

A different way to think about the universe and the space that surrounds us…if you have the time and patience to actually go through all twelve volumes.

Finally…..

Nick drew my attention to an image that I had not come across before named “The Pale Blue Dot”

The Pale Blue Dot

The Pale Blue Dot was taken when the Voyager 1 spacecraft reached the edge of the solar system, 12 years after its launch and travelling at 40,000 miles per hour (64,000 km/h) at a record distance of about 6 billion kilometres. On February 14, 1990, having completed its primary mission, the spacecraft was commanded by NASA to turn around and photograph the planets of the solar system. The image was inspired by the astronomer Carl Sagan’s suggestion. The name for the picture, Pale Blue Dot, became popular when Carl Sagan published a book in 1994, also titled Pale Blue Dot, in which he discussed humanity’s place in the universe and our efforts to explore the solar system. A mind blowing image considering the vast distance that it was taken at. This was certainly a different way of capturing a landscape image.

References

Andreas Gefeller. 2014. Andreas Gefeller – Supervisions – Works. [online] Available at: http://www.andreasgefeller.com/supervisions/works [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].

Boyle family. 2014. Boyle Family. [online] Available at: http://www.boylefamily.co.uk/boyle/works/index.html [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].

Duret-Lutz, A. 2012. Torre de Belém – Stereographic Projection. [image online] Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/11173498266/in/photostream/ [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].

Duret-Lutz, A. 2012. Torre de Belém – Equirectangular Panorama. [image online] Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/11173580964/in/photostream/ [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].

Hockney Pictures. 2014. DAVID HOCKNEY. [online] Available at: http://www.hockneypictures.com [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].

Mishka Henner. 2014. Astronomical – Mishka Henner. [online] Available at: http://www.mishkahenner.com/Astronomical [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].

Space-Pictures. 2014. Pale Blue Dot – Pictures of Earth from Space – Space Pictures. [online] Available at: http://www.space-pictures.com/view/pictures-of-earth/pictures-of-earth-from-space/pale-blue-dot/index.php [Accessed: 3 Apr 2014].