Erik Hanson Digital Photography
Background
Erik Hanson's father was an architect who taught Erik to think about how lighting and views can change dramatically with small changes in viewing positions. This idea has fascinated Erik throughout his life and motivated him to study physics, mathematics, computer graphics, and now photography.
Erik's goal with photography, especially panoramic photography, is to help people experience new and interesting places through images. Erik Hanson Digital Photography offers fine-art panoramic prints of natural and man-made scenes. Erik also has a business, Experience Images, producing high-quality virtual tours for websites, CD-ROMs, and exhibits.
Panoramic Images
Different people mean different things when they talk or write about panoramic images. Erik Hanson Digital Photography produces images that show 360 degrees of view along their horizontal dimension and between 90 and 180 degrees of view along their vertical dimension.
To make these panoramic images, many "normal" images are taken in different directions from a common viewpoint, special software is used to "stitch" these images together, and image-editing software is used to edit the results. A more detailed discussion of process of making panormaic images is available here.
Because a panoramic image shows 360 degrees along its horizontal dimension, the left and right sides are connected in the scene, and a choice must be made about where to cut the scene to print it on paper. This choice is unique to panoramic images that have 360 degrees of view along their horizontal dimension, and it can greatly change the emphasis on elements of the scene by moving some objects to the center and others to the edges.
To think about the relationship between viewing directions and locations in a panoramic image, it helps to think about globes and maps of the world. On many maps, the horizontal dimension measures longitude, which is an angle around the equator, and the vertical dimension measures latitude, which is an angle away from the equator. If we try to print a map of the entire globe this way, the North and South poles will look very strange, because small distances at the poles can result in big changes in longitude. A panoramic image with 180 degrees of view along its vertical dimension would have similar distortions, so we usually limit the vertical dimension to a smaller angular range than 180 degrees. While the angular range of the vertical dimension will vary between panoramic images, the horizontal dimension always shows 360 degrees. This is why two panoramic images printed at the same width may have very different heights.
Because the horizontal and vertical dimensions of panoramic images measure angles instead of true distances, straight lines in a scene can often appear curved in panoramic images. It is interesting to think about how the lines will be curved in panoramic images taken from different locations. Erik finds this especially interesting because of his mathematics background.
Printing
This section is not completed yet. Erik prints his panoramic images at home on Epson Premium Glossy paper using an Epson 2200 printer with UltraChrome inks. This process is not considered to be archival, but this combination has a very wide color range and may last much longer than some traditional printing methods. The site will be updated to explain this in more detail sometime soon.
Email List
Erik has an email list to keep people informed about new prints and exhibits. Please send Erik an email by clicking here if you'd like to be added to the email list.
Contact
Click here to contact Erik Hanson by emailCopyright © 2004 Erik Hanson Digital Photography, all rights reserved.