Images Copyright Abteilung Waldschutz/Luftguete
Please note these are not ‘my’ images and are sourced from (and belong to) this site: http://www.tirol.gv.at/themen/umwelt/luft/livebilder/innsbruck-patscherkofel

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..and one led to another…

Located here.

People in a Market in Bozen:

Walking to a summit:

In a Berlin bakery:

Having a good ear scratch:

Or frame a scene:

Or with a bit of HDR trickery create a dramatic atmosphere:

So when I want to create GigaPans of mountain scenes I want to include clouds as well and use them to enhance the atmosphere.  Without clouds, or something different, big mountain panoramas can feel very ‘flat’. The big problem is that clouds move (often fast in the mountains). That may be OK for normal photography, but things that move can create a mess in Gigapans as they no longer match in overlapping photographs. This is normally experienced as the problem of moving people in GigaPans. However moving clouds can create bigger problems!

Here is one of my early GigaPans illustrating what can happen:

Crazy stripes! In this scene the moving clouds created havoc with the stitching. However it has created an unintentionally interesting image!

One tip from johnf is:

Try a different gigapan path, going by rows rather than columns to minimize the drift of the clouds by rows. I’ve found this to be the best solution…

I have found this does work and if the clouds do not drift too much you can capture scenes like this relatively well:

But you need several failures, a bit of patience and a lot of luck to get good cloud scenes in GigaPans.

At its core I believe that taking a GigaPan is really just like ordinary photography, the whole image needs to have a good composition and look great in its own right. In fact a panorama which is full of technical errors can still be a great composition and compelling to viewers because of it.

Take this example. I hiked for over 3.5 hours to get to this mountain to take the image. My rucksack was heavy with all the gear. It is a fantastic vantage point overlooked by the Nordkette ridge and looking down on Innsbruck and the Inn valley. One of the best views in the area. It was tricky to set up the gear.  As it was windy I had to weigh down the tripod with rocks in the snow. It was complex to setup the extent of the 360 gigapan as there were objects in close view. As the wind picked up I got colder. I had to restart taking the GigaPan sevral times as the unit kept on switching itself off (something to do with the batteries?). I took 1092 photos and got colder and colder while I waited. So I really deserved to get a good panorama!

Here it is:

OK so it is big, it stitched relatively well and you can zoom in and see some cool things.  But the whole panorama looks crap. Why? It is just simply a bad composition. It looks odd, boring and nothing draws your eye. I was so focused on the technology and conditions, I just missed the simple rules for composing an image. And not surprisingly its ‘Explore Score‘ on gigapan.org is 0.

Then take the next example. It was a leisurely trip to get there. I had had a nice bit of cake  with schnapps in the Alm below. I was drinking a cup of coffee as I took it. It was not that many photos in the panorama (800). Easy!  So I did not really deserve a good panorama.

Here it is:

When I look at it I see quite a few technical flaws. The sun was going in and out, so you can see ‘stripes’ where the exposure varies (see the grass on the right).  I was using autofocus so there are some obvious joins. Some of the mountains in the left distance are over exposed. However it is a compelling scheme to explore. This is reflected by the fact that at the moment it is my  gigapan with my highest ‘Explore Score’ on gigapan.org.

So what is the difference? In my mind it is just simple composition. It the 2nd panorama your eye is drawn to the interesting Alm Building with all its clutter. The image is framed on both sides by the grass slopes and then trees. You feel like you want to spend time exploring and experiencing this interesting Alpine scene. It’s not a masterpiece, but I a pleased with it.

With the 2nd panorama the difference was my approach and outlook.  I took my time. I did not worry too much about the GigaPan tech in it’s own right, it is juts a tool. In fact while I was eating my cake in the Alm below I started planning my scene and the experience I wanted to capture. For me the Mountains were important, but I wanted the slightly chaotic and lived-in detail of this real alpine agricultural building to be the focus. Therefore it had to be framed by the scenery. Then (while I had another Schnapps) I started to think about where the best vantage point would be. Then I spent a good 20 mins tramping around on the slope behind the Alm to find the best vantage point, the right angle and the right distance. The trickiest bit was getting the extent and alignment of the scene just right. With a GigaPan you cannot just look through a viewfinder and see what you are going to get. You have to be able to imagine it in your head. That’s what makes it so much fun!  So all the time I was thinking ‘composition’.

Recently I have noticed that with my photography in general I have been falling into the digital trap of just taking 100s of thoughtless pictures of a scene (while randomly changing a few parameters) and hoping one will turn out well . If you do not think about it, why should it! I have been inspired by a documentary I saw recently that (among other things) featured David Golblatt taking a picture. He spent ages scouting out his scene he wanted to capture, planning it and then getting everything juts right. The he just took one exposure as he was so confident that he had prepared everything so carefully.  Here is one example of  his approach.  More thought on composition and less snapping is what I am now trying…

So that is my GigaPan tip for today: “Composition is everything”

Recently I borrowed and then bought my own GigaPan.  I have gone for the GigaPan EPIC entry level model and I am using it with my trusty TZ10.

Essentially the GigaPan is a robotic camera mount to create high-resolution panoramic images.  You mount your digital camera on the GigaPan, set your camera to maximum zoom, set the desired extent of the panorama on the GigaPan (top left / bottom right) and then it automatically moves the camera to take the required photos (often several hundreds).  Once you are back at base you can use the GigaPan stich software (or other software) to stitch the images together into a large panoramic image.  Users can upload and share these images on the web site gigapan.org.

The big difference compared to other standard resolution panoramas is that gigapans are highly ‘zoommable’ and therefore provide an ideal tool to explore a ‘scene’.  For example here is one of my window view GigaPans:

I got interested in GigaPans as I am always interested in new kinds of photography that have been opened to us through cheap digital cameras.  In the film days no one could ever afford to experiment with huge numbers of exposures and the overhead of scanning images was high.  Now we have the great opportunity to see what you can do with hundreds of exposures to represent the experience of a ‘scene’ in new ways.  Previously my panoramas were just 30 or so prints blu-tacked onto whatever wall I could find as I could never afford to take real risks and experiment.

So I have been having a lot of fun (and some frustrations) with the GigaPan trying to create new mountain scenes, snow scenes, urban environments, parties, cakes, interiors and even some portraits.  Some worked, some didn’t'!  I am planning to do some blogging on my experiences and tips over the next few weeks.

The various GigaPan models are available from GigaPan Systems in the US.

On my iGoogle page I always have the webcam image from the top of the Patscherkofel mountain as it is a great way to check the weather.  For example, when there is cloud in the Inn Valley, I can check the webcam to see if the peaks are free of the cloud and it is worth heading up into the mountains.

As I look at the webcam several times a day, I started to get fascinated by the changing scene while the composition remains completely fixed.  So I decided to start ‘collecting’ snapshots from the webcam whenever I saw something interesting. These are my ‘found images’!

So here they are:

Images Copyright Abteilung Waldschutz/Luftguete
Please note these are not ‘my’ images and are sourced from (and belong to) this site: http://www.tirol.gv.at/themen/umwelt/luft/livebilder/innsbruck-patscherkofel