Panographies are wide-angle pictures composed of several individual photos manually stitched together. They give the impression one would get when looking around and putting the images together in his head.
Mareen Fischinger, a talented photographer from Dusseldorf, Germany, has come up with a technique that allows you to capture an entire scene, by assembling dozens of photos of that scene. Here’s how she does it: first she picks something interesting to photograph, than searches for the perfect spot to shoot from and doesn’t move from that position until the process is complete. Next she manually sets the white balance, focus, f-stop and shutter speed of the camera so that all the photos are identically exposed. Then she points and shoots, making sure she moves the camera lens to cover all positions. The more her shots overlap the easier it is to assemble her panography.
The secret to a great panography is making sure you have shot of everything in the scene you want to capture, even the most uninteresting parts, otherwise you’re left with a big whole in your image, after assembling the photos. After taking the photos, Mareen uses an image editing software like Photoshop to tweak the photos and assemble them on an RGB canvas, like a virtual puzzle. It takes a while to get used to and get it just right, but the end result is really quite fascinating.
Photos by Mareen Fischinger
