WHO AM I?
I am the author and the main animator of the site, expert in digital technologies, especially in the context of large corporate information systems, I have been practicing photography for several years which has brought me over the years to experiment various techniques such as panning, 360 °, 3D or Pinhole.
My passion for travel and the great outdoors naturally led me to search for ways to prolong these moments of escape through different image capture techniques. Residing in the heart of a big city, the moments of immersion in large spaces or in the middle of nature are always a way to relax and refocus on one’s roots and oneself. I quickly found my small viewfinder 24×36 too narrow to try to extend this experience, and decide to open my field of view with the images by assembly (panoramic, 360 °, mini-planet).
I would be happy to share with you these passions.
To contact me : panhobby (at) photoplanet360 (dot) com
My photographic journey in 4 dates
By a competition of circumstance, it is that year that I invested myself a little more in photography. It is by visualizing black & white photos composed and developed by my brother that my interest has been stimulated. I was able to test my abilities using my camera of the time, a Canon AE-1. Its very simple use while allowing quick access to all settings made it an excellent material for learning the basics of photography.
A trip to London armed with my Canon AE-1 also made me understand very concretely the great interest of the meeting of these two disciplines that are photography and travel. The question remains: Is photography the pretext for travel or the opposite?
Years have passed, I have changed devices several times to more and more advanced configurations: Kodak Instamatic, Minolta 500 SI Super / use with Fujichrome Velvia, Minolta Dimage X (2 MP), Minolta Dynax 7D (6.1 MP) and currently Canon 5D mark II (21 MP) and I was lucky to make several trips to America, Asia and Europe, of course still armed with my camera.
On the lookout for the slightest image to capture, the index awake.
This year 2002 was for me a new discovery with the panoramic photo. After studying several sources of internet information on the subject, I decided to move from theory to practice. My very first editing to avoid the parallax between views as much as possible, was based on a simple Manfrotto sliding plate fixed on a tripod. In the middle of winter, it was during an event in Paris celebrating the arrival of the Euro that I took my first sequence. The exercise was not easy for a first, many passers-by, very contrasting brightness of night and very intense cold. Finally, I only had time for one sequence. Fortunately, the result motivated me to persist in learning this technique and I continued to capture panoramic images.
You can see some of these images in my photo gallery.
Encouraged by the results obtained in 2002 with my first panoramic images and my montage of fortune, I decided to realize a more ambitious panoramic head using standard elements of the trade with a reduced budget. There is the sliding plate, a plate and two metal brackets that firmly ensure the positioning of the nodal point around the axis of rotation. Finished with black paint for a more professional look.
This arrangement does not allow tilting of the device, and therefore is limited to panoramic images with a single band, without allowing mosaic shooting.
It was during a trip to the heart of the great outdoors of the American West that I was able to fully utilize this panoramic head of my creation and capture the magnificence and grandiose dimensions of these landscapes. The exercise is not easy as these spaces are disproportionately large, however it must be admitted that this panoramic format is perfectly appropriate and once returned home to believe it still.
During my travels, I continued to practice panoramic photography by making hundreds of images, which allowed me to better master and deepen my perception of this format, the technical aspects as well as the aspects aesthetic.
This year, I bought a small Gopro camera, small in size but big in the opportunities it offers. One of the aspects that I like is the very varied angles that can be obtained thanks to the wide angle and the many fixings.
Seduced by the wide angle of this camera, a very short focal length that I do not have with my SLR, I thought that it could allow me to explore the creation of 360 ° images (by reducing the number of photos required to cover the entire field).
My first mini planet made with a Gopro:
Although the 2014 Gopro captures images with good detail and good color respect, I am aware of a certain defect such as chromatic aberration (see my article on the correction of this defect). Nevertheless, the size of the camera and the speed with which one can shoot in 360 ° is quite attractive (see the Panoramic Guide).
Today: All-round exploration
Today, I still shoot panoramic photos, mainly using a Canon 5D mark ii, either in hand-held shooting, or with a tripod and a panoramic head.
Depending on the circumstances, the use and the desired result, I also use other equipment such as the Insta360 ONE X, iPad or Gopro (see the Panoramic Guide).
In addition, I continue my exploration to various techniques of image capture, with the aim of understanding both the technical aspects and the more artistic aspects (linear panoramas, timelaps, hyperlaps, pinhole, 3D images, spun from stars, milky way).