The 42ft wide Liverpool skyline hdr panorama

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Pete
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skyline-pano-hdr2-2copy.jpg


I’ve posted a photo of this image before on my 365 blog, which is currently undergoing tweaking. I thought it might be nice to properly show the image and discuss it a bit. You always see people discussing megapixels on forums and what you can print to. People saying they have a 8mp camera and it does A3 nicely. Which is fine for family portraits and things but when a client asks you to produce something 13 meters, 42 feet wide from an 8mp camera you of course say yes. I’ve printed to 1 meter before now without issue. The prints look great. So 13m? Easy. Ok so maybe not easy. You read articles about 50mp Hassleblads with sensors the size of TV’s that people use for advertising, for billboards. You never in your right mind think that you can use a simple mid-range DSLR with only 8mp to produce something 42 feet long and 9 feet high. Never say never though.

After chatting with some friends about the best way to acomplish this it was decided a panorama was the way forward. There was no way that my Sigma 10-20 would be able to resolve enough detail at 42ft wide from 1 image. Not only that but the aspect ratio wasn’t right for a single image. So a pano it was. That made things easier. 9 meters wide and I’ve printed to 1m before now so thats just 9 images right? Not exactly because its also 3m high. So thats 27 images. 3 panoramas. Tricky, but doable. Trickier for one reason though, HDR. To do a solid HDR tone mapped image you need at least 3 exposures. So that takes us up to 81 photos. Oookay, ow. Its tricky enough trying to produce 1 panorama not just 3 so you can make one large one. No worries, I eat stress for breakfast. At least I would if I ate breakfast and it came as something chocolatey.

I had two ideas for the final shot. Sunset over Albert Docks and the Liverpool skyline. Sunset over Albert Docks was easy enough to shoot. It just took the right sunset to nail the shot. While working I found that I couldn’t quite get the 81 images quite right. I felt that they weren’t lining up properly. It was sorta tricky trying to keep it all in my head as I was working off lining up each shot via the focus points inside the camera. Trying to keep track of where I had lined everything up was not working. So I focused on creating one solid panorama. Instead of landscape images I went for portrait using the 24-70. This way I would stand a better chance of getting more detail in the shot. It was a little more awkward getting the Liverpool skyline shot though. I wanted something that no-one had ever done before. Liverpool skyline at sunrise in HDR. I wanted to retain all the detail in the buildings while having a stunning sunrise. As you can see though that never happened. I spent nearly a week getting up at 3am to take the photo. Day after day of rubbish sunrises. My deadline was fast approaching so I had to conceed defeat on that front. I went for sunset instead in the hope that the skyline would look stunning. I got lucky.

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So for this I went with the 24-70 in portrait taking 3 images at each section. I went from the terminal at Birkenhead all the way to the Anglican Cathedral. The obvious issue being that to get the boat in I needed to be at 24mm which meant the skyline would be smaller than I had liked. But it added a nice bit of context to the shot. I think the final shot was around 33 images in total. So 11 images for the pano essentially. I HDR’d each section seperately using Photomatix rather than building the panorama first and then trying to HDR that monster. That was easy. The next part was creating the pano which I thought would be rather complex. Its not like I went out there with all the top gear for creating a panorama. One of those fancy tripods for example. No, I went out and winged it in the hope that my Mac would save me. I tried a few programs before I noticed that Photoshop CS3 had a panorama feature. “Why not” I thought. I threw the photos at it and damn. It worked. I honestly couldn’t believe it. For something that had 0 options beside load images it worked so SO well. There were no joins, no colour issues between shots, no exposure issues between shots. It was simply 1 image.

Now the tricky part. I was working with an image that was quite large and I had about 2gb free. Applying any adjustment layer to this image meant that that 2gb was gone instantly. I had to move my entire mp3 collection off my local drive which gave me 40gb to play with. I was working with an image 16809px by 3529px, which isn’t exactly *that* large but I only have 2gb ram so it was sluggish. The end photo needed to be closer to 50,000px wide. I had to do some processing to the image as I felt it needed tweaking. Annoyingly if you see the final piece you can make out where I’ve done a bit of work because the brush size is the size of your head in real life. To get the image up from 16,000px to 50,000px I used a program called Genuine Fractals. I’ve used it before and its really good but the one major limitation is that you’re looking at it on a 15” display. Sure it looks fine there but is it going to look good once its hung on the wall 42 feet wide or are you going to get a call from a very irate client? I put in the measurements and set it off. The first time it failed because it ate about 20gb of free space I had left. I moved everything I could off and set it to run again. It took ages and didn’t run out of space thankfully. I was left with a 2gb image. That’ll be easy to email I thought. At least it was 2gb uncompressed. Once I saved the jpg it was down to around 400mb which was fine for uploading. Still, about the biggest image I’ve ever worked on.

The client was happy and I waited for it to go up. They printed as wallpaper and applied it as such. The client being Pizza Express and their new Liverpool restaurant at Albert Dock. A prime location right opposite the new Echo Arena. So not exactly something I could mess up. I got a call saying it was up and looked great. Yey. I went along to see it and holy moly what a result. Its about the length of a bus, perhaps longer. Incredible really. The detail is quite astonishing too. I expected at least some pixelation but theres none. It really is fantastic to see, if I do say so myself. So props to Lightroom, Photoshop, Photomatix, Genuine Fractals and to Liverpool for making a rather nice skyline to photograph.

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That is truly remarkable Pete. Quite a fantastic bit of work. Reminds me of my childhood memories, waiting at Birkenhead terminus for the ferry to Liverpool.... (y)
 
Fabulous Pete. Good to hear the story of how it evolved.

Congrats... You must be so proud to have your mega image(s) on display to hundreds a day. I hope the clientele appreciate it!

This does make one stop and think about the effort that goes in to producing pictures of this scale.
 
Stunning..... My bro prints this type of thing onto a clear film which they then laminate into glass panels each 1400mm X 2800mm to create glass walls / displays etc the printers huge and costs approx £1500 per ink fill.
 
:notworthy::notworthy::notworthy::notworthy:

I am in awe. That is absolutely stunning. The detail is unbelievable.
How you managed to get all the seperate bits in place is just to complex for me to grasp.
And thanks also for the in depth description, it helps put into context how difficult a job it must have been.
Well done I've run out of superlatives, and that very rarely happens. (y)

Andy
 
I have a friend who does 360s for a living and he has a mechanism that he fits onto his tripod and it advances the camera by a number of degrees which he selects. The hire and use of this type of mechanism would have taken a weight off your mind.

I think there are halos around both the cathedrals which is probably all right with the powers upstairs (or wherever they are). There's also one on the Liver Buildings which I am sure that all true born Liverpudlians (me included) would applaud.

There's a vertical something(?) - a black line - between the Docks and Harbours and the Radio City Tower which I don't recognise. What is that?

I'm not sure that Liverpudlians consider Birkenhead to be part of the city skyline. Why include it in the city skyline?

The way they've hung it reminds me of the Night Watch. When Rembrandt had finished it, the elders discovered that it was one foot too long when they put into the frame. So they cut one foot off. I understand that someone found the missing bit and the picture is now how Rembrandt painted it. The bend in the wall is a bit odd to me, bit if that's what the customer is paying for then so be it.

The narrative is interesting, but the text could have done with a visit to Word or whatever word processor you use. Most of the errors involve the apostrophe - a tricky area these days. TVs is the plural of TV, despite popular ignorance on the topic; your use of its was as an abbreviation for it is and should have been it's; and thats can only be that's.

Really impressive piece of work and a great story. Now I all need is sufficient love of pizza to travel 20 miles to see the picture in the raw. We did see the building when we went to the Klimt exhibition on Monday, but we'd already had a very bad Chinese meal in Liverpool so a pizza was off the script. Normally that's hard to do, but we succeeded.
 
How great to see your work in such a place. and a good description of how you achieved it. Well done.
 
That is truley stunning mate, the explanantion really put's into perspective how much work was involved. Very well done.

Sean
 
Stunning piece of work and shows that you dont need a pimped out fancy studio to turn out good stuff well done .
 
Stunning piece of work and shows that you dont need a pimped out fancy studio to turn out good stuff well done .

You would need a MAAAAAAAAAAAAASIVE studio to fit Liverpool in it :D

It is an absolutely fantastic bit of work though, the size amplifies its aweomeness.

Gary.
 
Nicely done and thanks for sharing the whole procedure with us. I reckon you can afford a Hassleblad now with your fee ;)
 
Hats off to you Petemc.. outstanding piece of work..

I would visit to have a look but Liverpool is a long way for a pizza from Kent.

Nice one..

Nigel.
 
what a tremendous final image, and a unique approach to solving a problem. well done!!!
 
Pete, I've been in there and seen this in the flesh. It is even more spectacular in person than in these pics on here. (y)

Great stuff (y)

Chris :)
 
Quite simply outstanding work....it is a bit of a shame they decided to put a wall joint in it....but none the less, amazing!!
 
What would you do differently next time?
 
Would you do it again? Would you do one even bigger?

Theoretically you could go as big as needed using the same method. Great shot by the way and nice job on the huge print.
 
Superb Pete :clap:
 
Very very well done. liked the write up on how you achieved the near impossible.
Again congrats.
 
absolutely incredible. had no idea you'd done this. stunning
 
I have a friend who does 360s for a living and he has a mechanism that he fits onto his tripod and it advances the camera by a number of degrees which he selects. The hire and use of this type of mechanism would have taken a weight off your mind.

I think there are halos around both the cathedrals which is probably all right with the powers upstairs (or wherever they are). There's also one on the Liver Buildings which I am sure that all true born Liverpudlians (me included) would applaud.

There's a vertical something(?) - a black line - between the Docks and Harbours and the Radio City Tower which I don't recognise. What is that?

I'm not sure that Liverpudlians consider Birkenhead to be part of the city skyline. Why include it in the city skyline?

The way they've hung it reminds me of the Night Watch. When Rembrandt had finished it, the elders discovered that it was one foot too long when they put into the frame. So they cut one foot off. I understand that someone found the missing bit and the picture is now how Rembrandt painted it. The bend in the wall is a bit odd to me, bit if that's what the customer is paying for then so be it.

The narrative is interesting, but the text could have done with a visit to Word or whatever word processor you use. Most of the errors involve the apostrophe - a tricky area these days. TVs is the plural of TV, despite popular ignorance on the topic; your use of its was as an abbreviation for it is and should have been it's; and thats can only be that's.

Really impressive piece of work and a great story. Now I all need is sufficient love of pizza to travel 20 miles to see the picture in the raw. We did see the building when we went to the Klimt exhibition on Monday, but we'd already had a very bad Chinese meal in Liverpool so a pizza was off the script. Normally that's hard to do, but we succeeded.

*pointless comment removed*
 
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pointless nonsense

and you fail to make it through the day without a warning. Pointless post, removed.
 
Pete i had to do a lot of printing for my work recently, and im reliably informed that the image given for printing needs to be 25% of the final printed size...i dont know if that helps, but it certainly helped me when i was doing exhibition stand artwork.

I would prefer if comments were kept to the photo or art presented, and not grammer, its rude to pick holes in peoples typing and written presentation
 
I have a friend who does 360s for a living and he has a mechanism that he fits onto his tripod and it advances the camera by a number of degrees which he selects. The hire and use of this type of mechanism would have taken a weight off your mind.

I think there are halos around both the cathedrals which is probably all right with the powers upstairs (or wherever they are). There's also one on the Liver Buildings which I am sure that all true born Liverpudlians (me included) would applaud.

There's a vertical something(?) - a black line - between the Docks and Harbours and the Radio City Tower which I don't recognise. What is that?

I'm not sure that Liverpudlians consider Birkenhead to be part of the city skyline. Why include it in the city skyline?

The way they've hung it reminds me of the Night Watch. When Rembrandt had finished it, the elders discovered that it was one foot too long when they put into the frame. So they cut one foot off. I understand that someone found the missing bit and the picture is now how Rembrandt painted it. The bend in the wall is a bit odd to me, bit if that's what the customer is paying for then so be it.

The narrative is interesting, but the text could have done with a visit to Word or whatever word processor you use. Most of the errors involve the apostrophe - a tricky area these days. TVs is the plural of TV, despite popular ignorance on the topic; your use of its was as an abbreviation for it is and should have been it's; and thats can only be that's.

Really impressive piece of work and a great story. Now I all need is sufficient love of pizza to travel 20 miles to see the picture in the raw. We did see the building when we went to the Klimt exhibition on Monday, but we'd already had a very bad Chinese meal in Liverpool so a pizza was off the script. Normally that's hard to do, but we succeeded.

I disagree on many counts here.

First up, perhaps Pete did not want to simply hire the tools, but get the job done in his own way - perhaps even for a challenge?

Secondly, to slaughter the grammar and spelling is way out of order and malicious which leads me to think that you may be jealous.

Finally, the slight on Liverpool is uncalled for as well.

I dont get this at all.

Sorry, meant to say don't.....
 
Bravo petemc:clap: an awsome bit of photograhy and proceeing...wish I could see it in the flesh(I mean Print lol) Congrats and thanks for the interesting walk through

Stef(y)
 
I was at the dock this afternoon and had a quick look in through the door of Pizza Express.

Its an impressive piece - as said above - its impossible to get a proper impression of the work from a small version reproduced here. Seen large it has a huge impact.

No doubt you could have done it differently, but I can't see any of the Pizza Express diners looking at it and thinking "Do you know, I think the 'tog should have used a tripod". Nor do I suspect that they'll be wondering which lens was used or whether it was done in landscape or portrait format.

They'll simply appreciate the pic for what it is. An enhancement to their surroundings.

Well done.
 
I dont get this at all.

Think its simple really. I critiqued his work once, so now he has to critique everything I do. I'm surprised he didn't critique the size of the image, the placement of the name, title of the thread or even ask what shoes I was wearing to offer pointers. I hadn't even seen his post up until now because he's on ignore after similar stupid posts in other threads of mine. It is completely petty to resort to that sort of statement about grammar, Liverpool and so on. I didn't post the image up here for any sort of critique. Its pretty obvious really because theres nothing I can do to change the final print. I put it up here as a nice behind the scenes story on a large project to show people what can be done with a simple DSLR. Its nice to see that others here got that and appreciated the time I spent writing it. Thank you for the nice comments :)
 
Pete

I don't normally comment on your work as the HDR style isn't really my thing.

But thats actually not far from being fantastic

:clap:
 
Think its simple really. I critiqued his work once, so now he has to critique everything I do.
To tell the full story, I reported one of Pete's critiques to the mods and asked for them to close the thread as I found Pete's attitude to be bordering on bullying. Marcel closed the thread and used the following words in his reply. "Pete, learn to word your posts better, your sarcasm and choice of words might seem funny in your head but it really makes you sound full of yourself, pretentious and arrogant."

I ask again "What would you do differently next time?"
 
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