360° panoramas – Page 3 – Richard Rathe's Reflections

Treatise on Panopainting

Panopainting (verb, noun) – Panoramic photographs captured in real-time with unpredictable, non-deterministic distortions due to movement of the camera (and sometimes the subject). The aesthetic value of these images depends on the camera’s “stitching” algorithm and the physical “brush stroke” performed by the photographer. A degree of “glitching” is expected and often leads to cubist or impressionistic effects. Each exposure is unique due to inevitable variation in subject and technique. [Gallery]

History

Panoramic works of art have been around since early man painted herds of animals on cave walls.

Lascaux Cave – Great Hall of the Bulls [source:pinterest]

Leonardo da Vinci painted his iconic Last Supper in a panoramic format that appeared to be an extension of the room.

Leonardo da Vinci – The Last Supper [source:wikipedia]

Large-scale painted panoramas (aka cycloramas) of major historic events were popular at the time of the Civil War.

Paul Philippoteaux – Gettysburg Cyclorama [source:fandom]

The earliest photographic multi-image panoramas date from around the same time.

1851 San Francisco by Martin Behrmanx [source:medium]

The same technique found its way into modern photo albums…

Panographic film cameras were developed and ultimately became inexpensive and disposable.

With the digital age came specialized software that could stitch images together into a seamless whole.

Today panoramic photography is as easy as panning your phone!

Happy Discovery

For the first few years I took panoramas in the conventional way—sweeping the phone in a horizontal arc.

Then one day I faced a novel situation. I wanted to take a panoramic photo of colorful cloth on display in a cramped market. There was only six feet between booths. Using an arc would yield very distorted and unpleasing results, so I improvised. I kept the phone steady and walked parallel to the booth.

The resulting image was flat and undistorted (except the woman who moved as I passed).

I refer to these images as “roll outs” because they remind me of the flattened images of pottery, etc. seen in journals. Link

Mythological Vase, Maya, Late Classic [source:mmoa]

The creative potential of this technique became clear one day when I had some time to experiment on the beach.

The interaction of the moving camera with the surf and my feet created interesting distortions and time lapse sequences. And thus panopainting was born!

Gallery

Here are examples of my best work so far. [Click on each image to see a high res version. More…]

I especially like the sense of motion in the runners [detail], while the spectators on the left are totally unaffected!

Everglades (Sail) Kayak Trip 2017

Everglades time again! This year I went for five days/four nights with my sister Diana Pray from LA. We did a lazy double figure eight route around northeastern Whitewater Bay and the Gulf. [Gallery] With the exception of a few distant motorboats we were completely alone for four days, quite remarkable!

The wind was southerly the entire trip, so the first day we started out sailing almost all the way to the Roberts River Chickee.

I brought along a 360° panoramic camera and took some impressive shots! Here we are on our own little planet.

The next day we took The Cut-Off over to the North River and ate lunch on the Watson River Chickee. Then we got lost in The Labyrinth on our way to the Shark River.

Surprisingly we ended up on what I call “Dad’s Creek” where my father and I dumped the canoe in 2005. This set us up for a very pleasant twilight excursion up stream to the Shark River Chickee.

The next day the water was like glass as we headed into one of the northern channels of the Shark River to set up our boomerang out to the Gulf of Mexico. [The river reverses flow twice a day, down with the outgoing tide and up with the high tide. So if you time it right you can ride the current both ways! I call the upstream flow the “Everglades Escalator!“]

This trip was remarkable for how many sea creatures we saw! We watched dolphins feeding/cavorting at least ten times, including their habit of laying on their side in the shallows and splashing fish onto the shore.

We saw a Manatee come up for air and then swim under us in the Labyrinth. But the highlight was returning up the Shark River where we were in the middle of a group of Sea Turtles (maybe ten!) who would popup randomly for air and be gone in a second. [It reminded me of whack-a-mole!] One actually ran into Diana’s kayak!! The heads were huge so I think the were Loggerheads.

We got back to the Watson River Chickee at dusk, promptly ate and went to bed. The next morning we were greeted by dolphins feeding a few feet away!

The next day was a leisurely float down the eastern side of Whitewater Bay.

We got to the Lane Bay Chickee well before dark and had some time to relax and swim. The breeze finally kept the bugs off <smile>.

The next day we worked our way down through the maze of Hells Bay.

Back on Whitewater Bay we encountered a 10-15 mph headwind. It was a bit of a slog but so much better than a canoe!

A quick return trip across Coot Bay finished our most excellent adventure!

Intro to Spherical Photography

I’ve always been fascinated by 360° spherical photographs (sometimes called “mirrorballs, planets or wormholes”). [Click to Enlarge]

I bought a Ricoh Theta S with two 180° fisheye lenses pointing in opposite directions. The raw photographs are similar to equirectangular maps where the equator is “normal” and the poles are stretched. To prove this point I took a random map from the web and transformed it into a globe…

Here is the Theta S equivalent of the source map above…

The camera is controlled from a smartphone, and comes with software to turn the flat image into a sphere (top), a planet, or a wormhole (below).

The photos above were taken with a special tripod that is mostly invisible. The camera does have a physical shutter release so it can also be used as a handheld. [Note the giant hand, but where’s the camera?!]