Once I started playing with it we realized that it would be the only reasonable way to create a spherical multi-gigapixel image, something that had not been done at the time. A few years earlier Max Lyons created the first gigapixel image, he was followed by TNO that were the first to create a multi-gigapixel image that was viewable on-line. Making our first two images were pretty tricky, there was no Photoshop large document format at the time and we had to render in strips. It took us about 6 months before the first image was complete.

The first image we took was of the Owens Valley, where we were really lucky in getting a nice dusting of snow the night before we took the image.

View of Eastern Sierra Nevada Escarpment from the Alabama Hills
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

The second image we completed was the view of Yosemite from the diving board. This image was licensed by Tierra. They have done some really wonderful work using the image as a navigation device for their website.

View of Yosemite Valley from the Diving Board
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

I think that Eric and I had different interests in creating gigapixel images. I think Eric's primary interest was for visual effects. In visual effects the "pan and tile" technique of using a stitched panorama for a background pan move in a film is a pretty standard effect. There is a limitation to this use, you must know the focal length of your virtual panning camera before you shoot the background plate. The advantage of a gigapixel image was that if we had a high enough resolution image we could allow directors to choose whether they wanted a short or long focal length lens after the fact.

I had another reason for which I wanted to shoot gigapixel images. I have been shooting panoramas for 10 years or more and have always been disappointed when shooting panoramas of great vistas. They resulting images never really seamed as grand as I remembered them when I was on location. I eventually worked out that the problem was that when I was shooting panoramas I was not gathering as much detail as the human eye sees. One of the main features that makes a vista interesting is all the detail that you can see. By shooting a gigapixel image I determined that I could not only match the detail of the human eye, but exceed it.

After about a year of shooting these we had a fairly efficient workflow, that allowed us to shoot and turn around images more quickly. However our business didn't really take off until we figured out to get our work on-line.

When Google opened their Google maps API I saw a real opportunity. It was a relatively simple task to re-purpose the mapping API for images, we simply pointed the application at our tiles rather than Google's map tiles.

After we launched our website we got an enormous amount of attention, mostly due to a high ranking on the social bookmarking site digg.com. For 4 hours we were number one on the front page of Digg and during that 4 hours alone we had 18,000 unique visitors to our website. We were pretty impressed that our server held up as long as it did.

One of the many visitors that came during that 4 hours was the COO of Move.com. Move.com is one of the oldest and largest Real Estate sites on the web. Once the traffic cooled down a bit they approached us since they were very interested in our gigapixel images for two reasons... one was because of the amount of traffic and "stickiness" of the content, the second reason was that they told us they have great photos of the insides of houses, the outsides of houses and then they have maps, but they had nothing in-between that showed people what the neighborhoods were like. They really appreciated the "slice of life" that our Boston image showed where you could see the people hanging out at the corner cafes, kids playing in the park, the temporary art installations on the streets and which bands were playing at the outdoor music center.

The proposal was to do this kind of image in 147 neighborhoods in 34 cities in 3 1/2 months in order to have the images ready for their new website launch. By the time the project was complete, we had shot and stitched more than 270 3-6 gigapixel images (collectively that adds up to 1.08 petapixels!).

In order to take on a job this big we had to expand our workforce. We hired an additional photographer, Nathan Appel so we would have two photographers in the field and we also hired an assistant for each photographer. Eric stayed back at our studio to coordinate the massive job of stitching all the data that came back from the field. We had about 8 people doing Photoshop touch-up after the stitches were complete. We also had a "virtual location scout" that would do location scouting in Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth to find good location in advance of our arrival. She would then attempt to contact the building managers of the various locations in advance of our arrival.

View from Gasworks Park, Seattle Washington
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

The post production requirement was substantial. We bought 36 terabytes of drives for RAIDs and backup, had 36 cores of CPU and upgraded the stitching farm network to gigabit Ethernet. In the field we used Karline Rodeon heads, 11" Vaio laptops, Canon 5D, 16 gig CF cards, with Epson 5000 digital wallets, and after seeing Ian Woods rig at the IVRPA conference we picked up a Zigview for buildings that had high parapets. We had a thorough process for making sure that we did not loose data. At night after filling an Epson digital wallet, that data would be copied to two 100 giga hard drives so the space was free for the next days shoot. One driver would be sent back to home base and the second driver would be kept on location as a backup. Once Eric safely received the data and backed it up at home base the photographer in the field would delete the backup and Eric would send him a replacement driver.

The main problems that we faced were weather, getting permission to shoot, shooting locations that lacked the high vantage point, and of course the occasional technological failure.

View of Minneapolis from the Pilsbury Flour Mill
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

When we shot Minneapolis from the Pilsbury Flour Mill it was 3 weeks before the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge which can be seen in the image. When the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Saw our image they realized it would make an excellent reference image for their investigation into the causes of the collapse.

Initially we thought that we could just plan a route and finish all the cities in a region before moving on in order to minimize the required travel time. Unfortunately, we had to toss that idea after our first city was blanketed under a thick layer of fog lasting 4 days. In addition to the usual photographic issues with weather, gigapixel photography is diminished by hazy atmospheric conditions and "seeing" or the amount of heat shimmer. Our travel had to be completely weather dependent. We would watch the weather as we wrapped a city and then move on to the closest city with good weather, since the same weather often effected a whole region (this often meant traveling back and forth across the country and made booking locations difficult). Several cities required film permits to shoot in public and these usually required two weeks to process. Some of the cities required multiple stops to work all of these issues out so there was a lot more time spent traveling than we initially planned.

View of Santa Monica from "The Shores" luxury apartments
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

Getting permission to shoot from the various private rooftops was a real challenge, especially in the post 9/11 climate. Unfortunately, we did not have a large budget for paying access fees, our pitch was based on the uniqueness of our images, and the free marketing they and their city would get by being featured on realtor.com. We were able to reassure them by showing them some of the other locations we had shot from (and having $5 million in liability insurance!).

Wildlife was an unexpected hazard for the summer gig. After speaking at the IVRPA conference Eric and I stopped at one location that required some hiking and we almost stepped on a rattlesnake. I dropped my pack containing my Canon 5D and the rattler attacked it, guess he must have been a Nikon fan.

In Milwaukee we had a close encounter with a pair of falcons. The security guard that took us up to the roof refused to step out on the roof. A few weeks earlier the falcons that spent time on the roof had attacked another guard, knocking him over, breaking his glasses and bloodying his face. When we opened the door, there were a pair of them, ripping a rat to shreds in the air in front of us. Luckily for us they were busy and we were able to get the shots from the other side of the roof.

Shooting on The Mall in Washington DC was difficult. We had to apply for our shooting permits weeks in advance and unfortunately there was no flexibility on the dates. We had to add an inch of rubber foam to any metal part that might touch the ground and the crowds were difficult to paint out, so we had to shoot from a 20 foot pole.

There was a lot of security around and when the machine gun toting armor clad capitol police approached us we were pretty quick to show them our permits. They were a little scary at first but pretty nice guys, and one of them wanted to buy a print after we explained what we were doing. When we shot in front of the Lincoln Memorial there was a large "father's rights" protest going on and their booths and banners were blocking the view of the reflecting pool. We were able to fix this with Flaming Pear's "flood" plug-in and some intensive cloning.

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

In Chicago we were able to get some great roof access at Hotel 71. The penthouse was under construction, being rebuilt for the new Batman movie "Dark Knight". Through a series of contacts we were able to shoot a very nice series of day and night images from the roof of what was to be Bruce Wayne's Penthouse.

View of Chicago from the penthouse of Hotel 71
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

Night view of Chicago from the penthouse of Hotel 71
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

Cloud gate "The Bean" Chicago
view in google map | view in HD View (PC only IE or FireFox)

Several of the neighborhoods that our client wanted us to photograph, had neither tall buildings or conveniently located mountains. In these locations we would rent a 140' crane or bucket truck to shoot from.

This was especially difficult in one of our last cities - Austin - because in addition to having to shoot from a crane, there were intermittent rain storms and cranes are especially dangerous when there is lightning. You are basically running a bunch of electronics on top of a very large lightening rod. Luckily for us the iPhone came out a few weeks before. So my assistant Debra Isaac was armed with an iphone and would watch live radar that she could download to her iPhone while I and a second assistant where up in the bucket. When the rain was about 3 minutes out she would call up and we would have the operator bring us down. After a few tries we managed to get the shot!

Greg Downing specializes in image-based 3D technologies. His photographic work has been displayed in some of the nation’s most prestigious museums including: the American Museum of Natural History, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Much of Greg’s technical background comes from his work in development at Realviz on ImageModeler, Stitcher and Sceneweaver. He has worked in Film Visual Effects production at Rhythm and Hues on "Narnia" and Sony Imageworks on "Spiderman 3" and "I am Legend". Greg teaches at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, has presented professional conferences for both visual effects artists and photographers, and has been published in numerous 3D industry magazines.

Links:
GregDowning.com
VisuraImaging.com
XRez.com

Previous articles on Greg Downing:
PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGE BASED MODELING DVDS BY GREG DOWNING
A CONVERSATION WITH GREG DOWNING: TRAVEL PANORAMAS, 3D TECHNOLOGY AND HDRI
GREG DOWNING PRESENTS PANORAMAS AT GATES PLANETARIUM VIDEO DOME
THE (MIS)ADVENTURES OF ONE VR PHOTOGRAPHER

CASE STUDY, TRIBUNAL PLAZA, NICE