Definition
Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. An image showing a field of view approximating, or greater than, that of the human eye – about 160° by 75°. This generally means it has an aspect ratio of 2:1 or larger, the image being at least twice as wide as it is high.
Image stitching
Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image.
Image stitching algorithms create the high resolution photo-mosaics used to produce today’s digital maps and satellite photos. They also come bundled with most digital cameras currently being sold, and can be used to create beautiful ultra wide-angle panoramas.
Other major issues to deal with are the presence of parallax, lens distortion, scene motion, and exposure differences. In a non-ideal real-life case, the intensity varies across the whole scene, and so does the contrast and intensity across frames.
Joiner photos
Joiner photography is a photographic technique wherein multiple pictures are assembled into one. There are two types of joiner photography, photographic collages and Polaroid collages.
You stand in one place and take photos all around you. With a ‘panorama’ you simply swivel and take from left to right or vice versa. To record a greater field of vision you work both up and down and across.
David Hockney
David Hockney, a seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, revolutionised visual art with his inventive technique of creating joiners. This method, which involves piecing together a mosaic of photographs to form a cohesive image, challenges and transcends traditional perspectives in both photography and painting.
By fragmenting and then reassembling the visual field, Hockney’s joiners disrupt conventional viewpoints, inviting a deeper exploration into the intricacies of perception and representation. This introduction sets the stage to dive into the impact of Hockney’s joiners, underscoring their significance in reshaping contemporary art and photography, and illuminating their influence on artists and photographers alike.
Image analysis
David Hockney’s ‘Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April 1986, #2’ is a photographic collage that chronicles his road trip on a California highway, CA 138. The artwork is composed of 750 color photographs, offering both the driver’s and passenger’s perspective of their journey.
The image reveals a seemingly mundane scene of a highway with desert vegetation but in Hockney’s interpretation becomes an exciting and vibrant artistic creation. His decision to use hundreds of photos offers the viewer multiple viewpoints by disrupting traditional camera angles; this creates an unusual experience for viewers accustomed to seeing only one fixed angle.
David Hockney described the circumstances leading to the creation of this photo collage of the scenic Pearblossom Highway north of Los Angeles. His detailed collage reveals the more mundane observations of a road trip. The littered cans and bottles and the meandering line where the pavement ends and the sand begins point to the interruption of the desert landscape by the roads cutting through it and the imprint of careless travelers.
“Pearblossom Highway shows a crossroads in a very wide open space, which you only get a sense of in the western United States. . . . [The] picture was not just about a crossroads, but about us driving around. I’d had three days of driving and being the passenger. The driver and the passenger see the road in different ways. When you drive you read all the road signs, but when you’re the passenger, you don’t, you can decide to look where you want. And the picture dealt with that: on the right-hand side of the road it’s as if you’re the driver, reading traffic signs to tell you what to do and so on, and on the left-hand side it’s as if you’re a passenger going along the road more slowly, looking all around. So the picture is about driving without the car being in it.”
