PANORAMA-3BEP Panorama. Large file for plant relaxation area.
PIC:Roger Donovan, Media Photos
Tel: 02920 361126
Mobile: 07711 325100
e-mail: [email protected]
www.mediaphotos.co.uk A recent interesting commission from regular client, The Ford Motor Company was a little different to my usual work and unusual in that I ended up appearing in front of the camera as the project featured in the company's in house magazine, Ford News.

An area of unused office space at their Bridgend Engine plant was being refurbished to create a relaxation area where staff could meet colleagues over a coffee. The plan was to turn two walls of the area into a giant photographic backdrop. Their first thought had been to buy in an image for the job but it quickly became apparent that sourcing an image of sufficient resolution to reproduce at such a large size was difficult if not impossible and so they contacted me.

Whilst the Nikon kit I use does produce very high resolution images this was going to require something special to achieve such a large image with sufficient detail. The solution was to shoot several images of a scene to create a stitched panorama of high enough resolution.

The brief was to shoot a generic scene of greenery, nothing that was recognisable or too detailed just something that would give a pleasing and relaxing backdrop. Luckily for me the grounds around the plant provided the ideal location and all that remained was to wait for Spring to pass and the greenery to flourish and a blue sky to appear.

The camera, a Nikon D800 was mounted on a level tripod in the upright position and rotated through 360 degrees taking an image approximately every 16 degrees. Each image needed to overlap the next to allow for seamless stitching. The finished panorama is made up of 22 separate 103 megabyte images stitched together using Photoshop to create a high resolution image with a file size of 700 megabytes which with some upsizing in the printing stage is large enough to produce a print approximately 3 metres high by 16 metres long. The top image here is the whole of the stitched panorama image although the limitations of online use don't allow the true resolution of the image to be seen. The bottom picture shows the finished print on the wall of the relaxation area with me included to give it all some scale.

The final image was printed in-house by Ford onto sticky backed wallpaper stock at 300 dpi. The amount of detail visible in the finished work is amazing with individual leaves and blades of grass being clearly visible.

The image below shows me with the finished panorama at Ford's Bridgend Engine Plant and the bottom image is a cutting from the company's internal magazine Ford News.

BEP-PANORAMA008The stitched panorama image created for the Ford Bridgend Engine Plant. The Panorama is made up of 22 separate 103 meg images stitched together using Photoshop to create a high resolution image with a file size of nearly 700 meg which with some upsizing in the printing stage is large enough to produce a print approximately 2.8 metres high by 15.7 metres long.
The image was taken in the grounds of the Bridgend Engine Plant and is virtually a 360 degree view of the grassy wooded area at the back of the plant.
The camera, a Nikon D800, capable of producing high resolution 103 meg files was mounted on a tripod and rotated between frames so that each frame overlapped the next by approximately 30%.
The brief had been to produce a non specific image of greenery to provide a restful backdrop to the new relaxation area.
PIC: Roger Donovan, Media Photos
Tel: 02920 361126
Mobile: 07711 325100
e-mail: [email protected]
www.mediaphotos.co.uk

FORDNEWS-PANO2Screenshot