One of those project has to do with panoramic photo albums in book's formats. The business started within his city, Budapest and thereafter moved to Beijing. In both places, Tamas was able to capture great atmospheres, which take into consideration the soul of a place. Typical and at the same time unique spectacles are the leading thread of his images, which are accompanied by texts in English and Chinese.

We talked to Tamas, so to discover how the project saw the light and his experiences with the releases and his time in China.

How and when did you start realizing panoramic photo albums?
I had been doing panoramas for web for a while when in November 2003 I bought a copy of a popular photography magazine at an airport newsagents and there I saw a short article about some panoramic photo albums. Previously I would not have imagined that 360 degree photography is recognised in print due to the strong distortion, so I always thought 360° is for web only.

I started to search for and review the panoramic photo albums, bought most of the available ones online and realized that not only those albums or coffee table books are popular that had 6x17’ or any medium and large format images, but also the ones with three-sixty panoramics.

I soon realized that with traditional photographic techniques, photography offers me only restricted possibilities. Panorama photography is freedom, complete rule of the surrounding space. To make it possible to see that, which may only be achievable with mythological powers.

Then I started to experiment with composing the first cylindrical images for print, shared them with two of my friends and soon I was able to convince them that we should establish a publishing business that specialises for panoramic photo albums. Then 360 Art Publishing Ltd. came to life.

Can you briefly describe the first 2 releases?
The obvious choice for the first album was the place I knew well, Budapest, the capital of Hungary. I worked together with my photographer and graphic designer friend, Peter Roth and went out to the field to experiment with handheld, linear and tilted panoramas as well. We had a long list of venues that we planned to photograph for the album, but of course it had a size limit and the main criteria for the selection was to show the best shots and unique places that many inhabitants never visited before. When the concept was presented to the owners, managers of the venues doors had been opened and we had not experienced any difficulties getting the permits and property releases. For example the Chief Architect of the House of Parliament had happily spent half a day with us working together, enjoying every moment of it.
By now the Budapest 360° album has got relatively high awareness and is a preferred gift item for corporations, conferences and private persons alike. This album also has a Chinese-English adaptation.

Budapest360.hu

I always thought I knew my homeland. However, I was amazed by the abundant sights I witnessed while collecting the material for Hungary 360°. My previous impressions and visual experiences gained new meaning as I searched for sites worthy of presenting in this panoramic technique, and then searched further for the right perspective from which to bring the topic to life while stretching it 360° degrees. In the process, I can say I rediscovered Hungary.
Not all sites have the makings of a good scene for a panoramic photograph, and therefore my album does not follow the common and perhaps expected themes of similar endeavors.

It may also be that this compilation does not display the most famous or most widely known sights of Hungary, but rather typical and at the same time unique spectacles. Despite the 360-degree approach I never considered it my goal to provide a complete picture of Hungary. Instead, I chose to represent only a sample that would spur Hungarian readers to make new discoveries and others living outside our borders to set off and travel.

How did the Beijing project came to life?
Several years ago I started to learn Chinese on my own since I dreamt of travelling there and see the remains of that great civilisation and natural beauties. Our publishing company had several great new publication plans on the table and of course I lobbied for China or Beijing. The 2008 Summer Olympics were approaching and we decided that based on the success of Budapest 360° we would invest into a new city panoramic album and that’s how the Beijing 360° endeavor had started.

click here to view Bell Drum panorama

click here to view Dazhalan Rikshaw panorama

click here to view Moon River panorama

click here to view Drum tower, rikshaw boys panorama

click here to view Grand View garden panorama

click here to view Beijing World Park panorama

click here to view GuGong panorama

click here to view Great Wall panorama

click here to view Beijing Chaoyang Park panorama

Can you give us some insight in the planning and realization? (permissions, travel, technical challenges)
Planning to shoot the city scenes where you live is not a big deal You just go out when it is snowing and when the skies are dramatic, but when you have limited time to spend on a place that you never visited before preparation is vital since you do not want to waste time and money and also you want to capture all what is available out there. So I spent months on reading, picture researching, reading guide books, travelogs and blogs. Building connections (guanxi in Chinese) with officials of the Chinese embassy here at home and also with expats living in Beijing. Collecting information on history, places, people, habits and rules since I wanted to travel to a country to take pictures where there are some restrictions and you just think you’re on your own.

I knew that foreign film crews can not just go out and make interviews with the people of the street, but rather they have to submit their filming plan and they would always be accompanied by someone from the Film and TV Department of Centre of International Cultural Exchange. There were no such rules for photographers I double checked it and I certainly wanted to avoid to have someone in my back while I am out searching for the ideal place, composition and time of the day so I was shocked when I received an email from someone from the above mentioned office.
“Please give us your travel schedule, your passport number, your birth date. All of these materials are necessary to get the shooting permissions. It will take 3 weeks to finish all the procedure. The equipment list. Please be sure to list out all the equipment with name, type, quantity, value in US dollars, number etc. Follow the usual practice, the service fee is to be charged. The sum depends on how many days you will stay in China. Our Centre will arrange the working staff to assist you throughout the whole trip. The accommodation and transportation of the working staff will be burdened by your side…” and it went on like this. Fine, that was the result of my...guanxi. Then I decided to apply for a multiple entry tourist visa and carried all of my gear and took pictures of the venues where I could arrange permission myself.

I was lucky since during my first visit in February 2006 I met a young men called Liang whom we became very good friends and he helped me a lot to realize my shooting plan. Though he has an antique business for tourists he did his best to accompany me whenever I arrived to Beijing for shooting.

I went with the desire to discover the remains of ancient times and encountered a bustling city modernising at high speed. Whenever I returned I was amazed by the changes of the cityscape. While I collected panoramic impressions of places, residents of Beijing were equally important to me. And they were very welcoming indeed.

It had been a year long project with four visits to Beijing and surroundings capturing almost the four seasons, photographing architecture, lifestyle and collecting as many panoramic impressions as I could. I missed the rarely seen Beijing snow by just a few days in February. In April I just arrived during the famous desert storm and kept my camera and lenses under double protection. In summertime we have walked a 10 kilometre long section of the Jinshanling – Simatai Great Wall and were totally exhausted by the end of the day. I was lucky to capture the moment when autumn arrived an Beijing and swept the ginko leaves across the pathways of Ditan Park and excitedly photographed old and young when they were enjoying the ginko leaves shower. Went back to Jinshanling to spend overnight on the Great Wall enjoying the misterious light of the full moon when the November wind from Hebei province was so chilly that paralyzed my fingers.

The album has 77 full page and 33 small size panoramic images plus more than one hundred solo images out of thousands that I took there. The Chinese text accompanying the images was written by Yu Zemin, a Beijing born writer and translator now living in Budapest and his text was translated into English. See sample pages at http://www.beijing360.cn

What equipment you choose for this job?
Same question I got from the Chinese officials, but with different reasons, I guess! For cylindrical panoramas I use my Canon 1D Mk II and Canon 1D Mk II N plus the Canon 15mm fisheye. Previously I used the Manfrotto VR head, but for this project I changed to the lighter Roundshot VR bracket.

What are your impressions on China and Beijing in particular?
Beijing is changing fast. Whenever I went back I was surprised about the pace of development and was also sorry for seeing the lost of the ancient values. If you visit the Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum in Xuanwu district in the morning and visit the Beijing Urban Planning Museum near Qianmen you would learn that Beijing executed well Deng Xiaoping’s legacy of “out with the old, in with the new” and buildings nowadays grow higher than the height of the throne of the Emperor. The throne still exist, but a lot of the hutongs (small alleys) and xiheyuans (quadrangle structures) have disappeared and is being disappeared still today. With this goes traditional family life and other ancient values. At the end of the working days when we did not plan shooting for the evening or night, my friend, Liang always led me to the remaining hutongs in Dazhalan and kept telling that I had to take pictures of the alleys, houses, facades, because when I come back next time I would not be able to see them. And sadly he was mostly right.
Beijing is a bustling city with big green areas, hills and sights, but is a little bit overcrowded since soldiers of fortune from the neighbouring provinces flood the city to seek for job and hope they will fulfill their dreams here.
Very colourful, sometimes noisy, polluted and developing fast. I wish I could spend more time there to discover every corner of it…

Can you tell us more about you precedent China project Sleep on the Great Wall?
On my first visit to the Wall I met an engineer from Germany who planned to walk the Wall from the farthest Western part in Xinjiang to the Old Dragon’s Head in the East end where it dips into the Bohai Sea. I saved this adventure into the things to do folder of my mind, but while in Beijing I wanted to get to know one part of the Wall better and that was Jinshanling where we spent two nights on two separate visits in a watch tower of the Wall. I have never been to the infamous and well restored Badaling section of the Wall where most of the tourists go to buy the “I climbed the Great Wall” T-shirts, because I preferred the sections where you can stay on your own undisturbed and feel that your presence melts into history.

The Sleep on the Great Wall project - is in the embryonic stage at the moment, but definitely there’s a plan to spend many nights and days along the wall in the future.

Contact: Tamas D.Varga of PanoGraph Ltd. Budapest, Hungary at: info [at] panograph.hu

Links:
Budapest360.hu
Panograph.hu

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