When a Picture becomes a Project

This NPR story (Biggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever) caught my ear for a couple reasons, first, it connects directly to a post I have been working on for this blog called Pictures vs Projects, and second, it sends a wonderful message out there to young photographers (of any age) that the world is still full of things to create great projects around; and if so inclined, involve all kinds of whiz-bang gadgetry and software.

So the deal is longtime Nat Geo photog Nick Nichols (pictured above) set out to take a photograph of a full redwood tree as part of a full story on Pacific Coast redwoods. Here’s the catch, these redwoods are over 300 feet tall and unless one is standing in the middle of a recent clear-cut chances are it's going to be damn difficult to see the whole thing much less back up far enough to photograph it. So the challenge - how to create a "single image" from close enough range to capture the detail of these extraordinary leafy leviathans? Nick's solution: Build a custom gyro-stabilized camera rig to take multiple shots and stitch them together for a composite photo. (See Redwood Photo - At least 1,500 years old, a 300-foot titan in California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has the most complex crown scientists have mapped. This photo, taken by Michael Nichols, is a mosaic composed of 84 images.)

Nichols, with the NG staff, created a system to holding a trio of Canon cameras focused to the left, middle, and right of the tree. The frame includes a gyroscope to keep the cameras steady. By lowering the cameras from the top to the bottom of the redwood they were able to capture 84 pictures to assemble the final shot. The result is featured in the October edition of National Geographic magazine. I’ve included the final picture (via link above) and embedded a video of the rig in action (below).

I'll go into it further in the Picture vs Project post soon, but the bottom line is interesting and unique visions of our world and interactions are all over the place; even more so with new technologies and software like the stitching option employed on the Redwood photos. (More on stitching check out All Things Photography and Luminous Landscape)