Planet warehouse

As you know from Sunday’s post, Mike and I hit up Goose Island last weekend to do some photography. We were, inevitably, drawn back to the Picken’s Kane warehouse to do a few shots. I’m rather fond of this one. Mike shot some video of me taking this pano if you’re interested – scroll down – it’s a really cool video shot with one of his new toys. I’ve included a few details about how this image is made below the photograph as well as a link to the flickr page with a much better tutorial and some really cool wee planets.

I’ve posted a few of these types of images before, so I thought I’d give you a bit of information about how they are made. I’ve heard them called “wee planets” or “little worlds” here and there, but they are technically called a stereographic projection of a 360-degree panorama. These images can be created with virtually any camera – even a little point and shoot camera or a cell-phone camera. What you need to do is take enough images to cover the entire 360-degree view, preferably using the same exposure settings for each image. This is, of course, much easier if you have a circular fisheye lens as it can be done with as few as two images – though it is best to take about ten to be sure you have everything amply covered in the frame. Using a Peleng 8mm circular fisheye, I take four overlapping images by rotating my camera 90 degrees around the center of the lens. I then take a photograph pointing straight up of the sky, and then a few pointing straight down (I take several of these, moving the tripod in each shot so that I can mask out my own and the tripod’s legs). Using a program that stitches images together (Hugin is a free option) you then create a 360-degree panoramic image and (again using Hugin) choose “stereographic projection.”

I know this seems like a really hap-hazard, quick explanation, but that is because there are much better tutorials elsewhere on line – here’s my favorite – if you need more directions and want to see some MUCH cooler wee planets – click here.

Photo by Justin Kern – Feel free to use images with links and credit – no commercial use without permission.

“This video was really kind of something that I decided I’d put together after we had even gone out shooting.  I’d been playing with a new camera I got just to start getting familiar with it, as well as shooting video in general.  After looking at all the clips I thought it’d be fun to put something together to go along with the photo Justin was shooting.”  –Mike

Shooting the Tiny Planet on Goose Island from Mike Boehmer on Vimeo.