Panoramic Photography

I have long been fascinated by panoramic photography, even though it wasn't until more recently that I knew what to call it. My fascination for panoramas may be related to my interests in widescreen preservation in films - I dislike the idea of having a more limited view than what the human eye is used to seeing.

My favorite type of panoramic photos are of the horizontal and vertical flat, planar type, as opposed to the spherical or 360 degree types, and my preference for horizontal flat panoramas may have come from my love for views of the Bay Area when gazing westward from the Oakland Hills. In fact, my interest in panoramic photos most likely began when I saw a panoramic photo of the Bay Area view by one of my father's colleagues. I was amazed at how she had somehow created this single wide photo, much longer than the typical photo. I was told that a camera with panoramic features was used to take the photo, which was then developed in a special way for panoramic photos. At that point, I wanted to try creating my own panoramic photos. But I did not have the equipment to do it, and I didn't want to "waste" film for my to-be hobby. Over the years, I came across multiple cameras that touted the ability to take panoramic shots, starting with a Pentax film camera. It had a dial on the back that allowed people to switch to panoramic mode, but special film was needed, and I never used the feature. A couple years later, we bought our first digital camera, an Olympus, and it also came with panoramic shot features. Now that I could take as many shots as I wanted without "wasting" film, I finally made my first attempt at taking panoramic shots, which was really merely taking multiple shots to be stitched together by the Olympus Camedia Master software that came bundled with the camera. I excitedly took the appropriate shots for the panoramic photo stitching, but the software didn't assemble the photos when I told the software to do so. In short, I had a problem with unfriendly, confusing software. Panoramic photography wasn't the software's focus anyway. Then in 2003, I was given a Nikon Coolpix 4300, and I gave panoramic photography another shot, particularly because the camera came bundled with ArcSoft PanoramaMaker software, which was, needless to say, designed to stitch panoramic photos. The software worked beautifully, and in almost no time, I had created my first believable panoramic photo - a photo of the Bay Area view from the Oakland Hills. Enthusiastic after this accomplishment, I moved on take photos in Amsterdam (failed to stitch smoothly), Hong Kong (slightly distorted), and from Sather Tower (pictured below).

I rely on PanoramaMaker to do the stitching part of the panorama making process, and I didn't have anything good enough to perform this completing step in this process until recently. This is why my love for panoramic photography did not transform into a hobby until recently, but I can finally create them now, and I will continue making more into the future.

- Gordon Mei, January 5, 2005

(Because of the wide nature of panoramas, you may experience horizontal scrollbars. Also, because each panorama was stitched from a different number of photos, you will be seeing nonuniform widths that ruin the site design a bit.)