A panoramic photographer doesn’t view the world in the same way as other photographers and planning a shot in all 360 glorious degrees changes nearly everything.
I’ve been passionate about the 360º image for several years now and probably talk about it too much. Part of this talk is encouraging other photographers to add panoramic photography to their répertoire and helping those new to panoramic photography to get started. Hopefully the following examples of what a panoramic photographer would do will encouragement some to try it out!
Commercial panoramic photography involves getting the scene right, in all 360 degrees around the camera. And, trust me, it’s harder than it looks! Here is one that I like to show as a sample because it’s a beautiful Hawaiian resort with a high degree of difficultly because the assignment is to show the room inside and the island view:
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Here are more resort rooms from this tour:
Aerial photography also presents challenges because it takes a helicopter or a huge drone to carry a good camera and lens. But there are other things to considerations like stitching problems, camera movement and a huge helicopter in the way… but those are just challenges that the panoramic photographer envisions when planning a shot:
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And while static scenes are probably the most common 360º photography, sometimes we want to show crowds too. It’s important to be quick and get the shot before timeout is over:
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This basketball scene is part of this tour of USC Athletic Facilities.
Of course we must point out the selfie. Ah the selfie… taking the this trend to a new 360º level has been fun for me over the years. People love and hate selfies and I’ve been called out for using a selfie stick. However, my selfie stick is different from others’ selfie sticks because mine is usually a tripod or a monopod to get my overlapping shots for later stitching:
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How is this for a selfie? It’s not your standard ‘I’m having a cocktail on an exotic tourist island‘ selfie?
And finally, what does a panoramic photographer do at a photography party? With models? And with lights? This time I did a riff on Levi Sim’s idea to tell a pinball story. So we all became the models and injected some silly drama into a scene where there was nothing to hide! Here we are at Photoshop World 2015:
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If you’re interested in trying this kind of photography, please let me know your questions in comments below and I’ll write another post about it in the coming weeks. You can also see and hear my advice in past Photofocus shows, just search for me on the Photofocus website and you’ll see several Hangouts and podcasts.
