A Walking Panorama

On a recent visit to Venice I experimented with a technique referred to (in my circles) as a walking panorama. This technique can be used to capture linear images of, for example, a row of buildings. It is particularly useful when you cannot get far enough away from your subject to take a conventional image. I merge the images in photoshop.

The rules are straightforward for a simple scene of terraced buildings with no gaps. You walk along at a constant distance from the taget facade, taking images at frequent intervals and making sure that you have symmetrical views of important features such as the red and white sunshade in the image below.

It gets more complicated if there are gaps between buildings where it is important to take an image down each gap, as well as face on to the facade; ideally you want to see both sides of the gap receding. It’s even more complicated if there are objects between the camera and the subject facade. I have tried this technique on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice and the palm trees on the central reservation rendered the image sequence that I shot completely worthless.

Here are some examples:

taken in Burano (walking as the title of this blog says) , six images face on to each building, each image a 3 shot HDR in this case.

and from a vaporetto on the Grand Canal – I suppose that would make it a floating panorama!