Little Planet spherical photography

My good friend Matt Hill recently gave me a very thorough primer about panoramic night photography, he’s been at it for a few years now and we are all indebted to Michael James Murray who showed all of us the way some 15 years ago when it involved a lot more fighting with Photoshop and other digital battles. These days it’s a much, much easier process during the capture if you take the time to set things up properly and test before you get out into the field.

But I had an opportunity to visit Quebec soon after my weekend at Matt’s and took the opportunity to put my skills to the test. Adding to the complexity was a bitterly cold night (about 30F with winds about 35 MPH at the top of the hill) so I was quite happy with these two final images from my first outing. Each of them is made from about 90 images taken on a specialized mount to ensure the rotation happens around the center of the lens itself instead of the camera. This prevents parallax, where objects don't meet when shooting panoramas which screws up the software processing these images. I also took two additional sets of exposures to make HDR images, which are sometimes used in challenging lighting situations with streetlights and unlit building parts.

I’m certain that the writing of it sounds a lot more complicated than it is in reality; mostly because I never fully understood it when I read about it online, the doing of it is a fairly straighforward process once you see it done. The gear to take spherical panoramas simply fits into a hand and is leightweight enough that I can throw it into my bag and not be anxious about needing to leave something else out when I travel as a result.

For Little Planets anything that sticks up above the horizon is a good start, add the fact the Chateau Frontenac is a dramatic subject and you can see why I braved the wind and cold. You can also see why I”m really excited about showing others how to capture similar shots in Venice this October, the campanilles, the narrow streets, the Rialto bridge, the churches, what opportunities for making great images. So come along and join my friend Shehab and I on our workshop, we’re going to help show you an amazing city.