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News: Panobook 2009 and now 2010!

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
logo-panobook.jpg


I received a brown paper package from Paris! Surprisingly beautiful pictures! The world from so many positions and poses! Panobook 2009 arrived on my desk. You can skip my findings by going straight to the publisher, Kolor and ordering yours (28 Euro) before they are all gone!

So what made me so excited? I already knew of the work of Klaus Esser from his contributions in OPF. This picture stuck in my mind! Very different boats than Nicolas Claris photographs, for example!

beautiful vertical pano Klaus
sorta reminds me of when i went boating last though ...

Klaus Esser said:
Thanks, Rob! I have another one - more "boat-like": :) :)
Stadtt_mellow_cool.jpg

best, Klaus

I saw that building again, sans de l'eau, gracing the first page the book opened to! So I was into things very quickly. Each page provides a related set of pictures showing the geometry, different views or a pano that spreads over two pages. In each case a map of that country provides location for that vista or view.

Background to this ambitious project: There was a lot of buzz at the idea of a worldwide effort by professional photographers and amateur enthusiasts to show together their own grand visions. This would be through the form of a superwide or tall panoramas. Today, with the availability of programs like AutoPano Pro, even modest digicams, handheld can be used to build impressive and amazingly perfect panoramas. Even 3 years ago this would have demanded much more technical skill and expense. The "geek-factor" requirement (of having to comprehend and then wade through boring computer coding interfaces) has been removed forever! The privilege factor, (of having the leisure time and funds to devote to such art was removed with intelligent "one-click" software like, AutoPano Pro. This revolutionary class of program stitches together, even huge numbers of pictures. Not only do objects get matched from one image to another, but even changes in light or shifts in attitude of the camera are accounted for! Below the simple and friendly graphic interface, the software takes on Herculean tasks that might boggle the mind of most folk. The software is able to do sensible things like look at each images EXIF table describing the camera setting for that shot and all the others that follow. However, the focal lengths given by that are often approximate. The software is able to readjust these "givens" according to the actual geometry of each image. As the next image is examined, earlier assumptions may be readjusted, so that, in the end, all the images are fitted together as if they were written by one large stationary lens. Yes, some pictures are taken differing in pitch, roll or even using another lens! The AP Pro software welcomes all such variables. So it's no longer an absolute necessity to use a tripod, never even mind a panohead! Imagine, even rules like "shoot with one fixed exposure" to allow a blended panorama with smooth tone transitions, are now breakable. AP Pro welcomes autoexposure if you have to traverse zones from light to dark.

Don't even specify which of 10,000 pictures were the one's in that panoshoot last month. APP, like magic, places groups of pictures in sets corresponding to a panoshoot and renders this into a stitched and blended picture with just a click.

So with a price of ~$99 (buying AP Pro) and removing barriers from all but the bedridden and anesthetized, people the world over have been enabled to be great in a small way. If anyone owns even a humble 2 MP digicam, you're in! Yes, the professionals with your most sophisticated professional camera and the lucky with their motorized geo-located motorized panorama head, you too!

We all can now transform our treasured visual experiences in a big way. Lots of adjacent small images can be perfectly matched and built into a single large picture that might have required an impossibly expensive and complex camera, maybe one not even built as yet! Each of us, with almost any camera can now swing the camera through the entrance pupil of the lens so as to take pictures in one or more rows to cover an entirely ambitious scene. Such large views of life are not cramped and so demand attention. We know what is grand. After all we see it with out own eyes. Now, instead of walking away, we can work away and, bit by bit, record the entire scene! That was never possible before for most of us. Now we all can participate. What better low cost way of spreading our joy of life? Suddenly, the most humble and the most celebrated can join together in sharing what makes our hearts race and our skin tremble in what we see around us.

So all over the planet, folk have been busy at work making large swathes of imagery of their most special places. The good folks at Kolor, the guys behind AP Pro, have collected select work from finalists among photographers who submitted their best work. The process must have been arduous because the selections from a wide range of talent do work well together. Subjects include breathtaking landscapes, city pomp of old Europe's castles and places, modern glass urbanization and still we have broken forgotten boats on a beach and crafting art sculpture out of sand, each page turn is a surprise! Remarkably this has been published in the form of a hardcover book, 8" x 12" or for our metric friends 20 cm x 30 cm.

Color in this book works very well on the whole. For some pictures, it couldn’t be better. A few might be less or more saturated than one would achieve as an individual museum print. It's very difficult to transform work from so many photographers, each determining their own color palette and ending up with one printer. It is certainly not in the quality of a Taschen book or something printed by the Getty Museum. In the first case, the price would have been $400 and in the second case, the J. Paul Getty Trust would have subsidized the book! However, the color is of good quality and in most of the pictures works just as one would want and hope for.




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Panobook 2009 HardCover



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The book Before Binding!



The Uncofee-table book: Unlike typical coffee table books, this does not use a lot of empty white space to highlight a limited number of pictures. This is more of a celebratory book for the accomplishment of so many photographers who engraved in every picture their experience, judgment and esthetics to make a work of art as a group and challenge to everyone to do even more such work with their own wonderful vision. So this book is an organized devotion to each participating artist. The layout is not cramped but white space has been better occupied by more images so one does not flip pages while sipping or conversing. Each set of facing pages deserves some time to enjoy. Frankly I have spent more than 5 minutes on just one page. No, it's not a textbook as there are scant words except for the index and introduction. However, the pictures, the result of successful selection, represent a high standard or work. Some of the photographs are beyond outstanding even given the limitations of the small size of the prints representing what can be wall size displays of breathtaking stature and glory.

So what's this challenge? This book represents the very beginning of an explosion of realization of closeness we are going to have. With such impressive imagery, we are going to get to know each other even better than ever as it's the work of individuals not corporate teams with political agenda. Imagine the potential impact of such open exchange? The miracle on technology, which has removed barriers to our expression of what, we individually find wonderful!

From the Kolor Website:

The Panobook is a compendium of the most beautiful panoramic images produced by a community of professional and amateur photographers from around the world. Stunning sites, unusual places, artistic montages and breathtaking landscapes have inspired the 221 contributors of this book.

Bringing together so many people from such different backgrounds and cultures around a common photographic book is a first in the history of photography. This project will be renewed each year.

Contributors :

Michel Accary, Kenji Akiyoshi, Robinson Alan, Ayman Aljammaz, Michel Allard, Leung Alvan, Philippe Aubert, Joël Bardin, Nic Barlow, Dominique Bec, Dirk Becker, Xavier Beguet, Frederic Beitz, Markus Bendler, Antoine Berger, Pascal Berlu, Pascal Bernard, Gérard Bernardini, Jean-Marie Biadatti, Gérard Biannic, Cyril Blazy, Bertrand Bodin, Yves Bodson, David Boggs, Fabien Bourdin, Christian Braut, Etienne Busson, S. Buxton, Jean-Pierre Caire, Georges Carrel, Laurent Carte, Marc Chauvière, Jason Cisneros, Paul Compton, Michel Comte, Hionis Con, Guy Cordelier, Gérard Coulon, Andreas Coutas, Chris Cunningham, Khôi-Nguyên Dang-Trung, Remy Dautheville, Jef De Becker, Dominique de Guillebon, Gérard de Wailly, Dmitry Degtyar, Claude Delaire, Philippe Delaplace, François Delauney, James Dery, Francis Desmond, Evaristo Tomas Diaz Fernandez, Andre Dreze, Gilles Dujon, Julien Dutheil, Maciej Dworak, Eric Epoudry, Henri Espié, Klaus Esser, Stéphane Evain, Yves Fauvel, Jan Felber, Emmanuel Fernandez, Bert Forbes, Arnaud Frich, Claude Gailledreau, Vincent Ganaye, Pascal Gautherot, Laurent Gebel de Gebhardt, Pierre Gentil, Murat Germen, Michel Giraudet, Richard Giubbini, Len Goldman, André Goossens, Jacques Gourier, Clive Griffiths, Luc Grillet, Alexandre Guinefort, Thierry Guinet, Peter Gutsche, Wolfgang Hahn, Matt Hardy, Jean-Louis Heitz, Julien Hericher, Michel Hernandez, Yves Hernandez, Michael Hilton, Ralph Hoffmann, Martin Holehouse, Leszek Imielski, Kurt In Albon, Wayne Jacobsen, Alexandre Jenny, Joseph Jensen, Mathis Joshua, Joël Juge, Wilfried Karl, Philippe Keller, Thierry Kergroac'h, Hady Khandani, Prashant Khapane, David Kinrade, Georg Kohr, Pierre Krausbauer, Trond Kristiansen, Martijn Kruijt, Frederick Kuckuck, Gérald Labrunie, Jean-Jacques Lacoudras, Lionel Laissus, Gérard Lalande, Yves Lambert, Laurent Lang, Eric Larcher, Christophe Larquié, Pierre Laugel, Thomas Lauzero, Jean-Pierre Le Corre, Christophe Lecomte, Marie-Hélène Leopold, Michael Lindsay, Chris Livingstone, Duncan Lock, Paul Lopes, Thibaut Loubère, Gérald Lucas, Andrew Lundquist, David Lyons, David Machet, Banthorpe Malcolm, Frédéric Mantegazza, Bruce Martin, Olivier Martinet, Matias Martorell, Matthew Massagli, Fulvio Massini, Kenji Matsushita, Shard Matthew, Olivier Menegol, Daniel Metral, Kezerashvili Mikhail, Thomas Mognetti, Gérard Moine, Damien Molyneux, Peter Morse, Stéphane Morvan, Malcolm Mosher Jr., Pierre Nantais, Julien Narboux, Patrick Nuiry, Greg Panayotou, Lukasz Panek, Ian Parr, Peter Pauer, Grob Peider, Yann Pendaries, Maxime Peregrini, Newman Peter, Magerus Philippe, Walter Pietsch, Matthias Pollmann, Jean-Claude Ponchel, Sylvestre Popinet, Pascal Porzio, Jasper Potts, Christian Praetorius, Mickael Profeta, Guillermo Puig, F Alfredo Rego, Christian Reinhardt, Didier Renvazé, Herve Rhinn, Gerard Rhinn, Jared Ribic, Dominique Richet, Zusman Robert, Jacques Rochet, DuWayne Rocus, Riccardo Rondinone, Andrea Rossi, Francine Roussel, Bernard Rousset, Arno Royant, Alain Saffray, Juraj Salak, Laurent Saleh, Raimund Sauer, Alberto Rot, Pascal Saulay, Christian Saunier, John Sauter, Etienne Sauvagère, Thorsten Schumm, Mark Schuster, Michael Seidel, Fantaguzzi Sergio, Xavier Spertini, Jirman Stan, Reed Steve, Bruno Stiefel, Daniel Tailhardat, Jean-Pierre Tiange, Ronald Tichelaar, Rami Tohme, Anthony Toulze, Brigitte Tranchand, Gilbert Treille, Denis Tremblay, Olivier Tubach, Matthew Turcott, Rob van Kralingen, Zac Vanderschyff, Gabrielle Voinot, Klaus Wagenhäuser, Matthias Wassermann, Christian Watier, William Wertz, Phillip Young, Mark Zbikowski, Elizabeth Zoob, François Zvardon.

The OPFrs are shown in Green! Let me know if you recognize other friends!
 
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Philippe Paquet

New member
Hi Guys,

I have a copy of the Panobook 2009 and it's really everything that Asher said about it. Now my goal will be to get my panoramas in the Panobook 2010.

Cheers,
Philippe
 

Lionel Laissus

New member
Hi folks,

We enjoyed a lot doing this panobook 2009, everybody did a pretty good work.
Now I'm looking forward to renewing the experience every year.
I will let you know when the website will be ready for receiving your pictures.

Asher thank you for the nice review.

"Vive le Panobook 2010 !!!"

Best

Lionel
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Deadline Approaching for Panobook 2010

Hi folks,

We enjoyed a lot doing this panobook 2009, everybody did a pretty good work.
Now I'm looking forward to renewing the experience every year.
I will let you know when the website will be ready for receiving your pictures.

Asher thank you for the nice review.

"Vive le Panobook 2010 !!!"

Best

Lionel
Deadline Approaching for Panobook 2010

This is something worth doing! Get your most beautiful Panos published. This is juried so pick carefully. Did up you best work and send it in!

Deadline is August 31st 2009. Those selected will have the pride of seeing their hard work in a fine tabletop book with some of the most splendid Panoramas made from all over the world!

Don't miss out!

Who can take part?

All Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga customers can take part in the Panobook project. Each user can propose up to 3 panoramic images.

How are the images selected?

This year, a jury composed of famous photographers will select the images that will be published in the book:
Arnaud Frich, Bertrand Bodin and Hervé Sentucq, all three are specialized in panoramic photography.

What is the timetable?

You can upload your photos via this website from July 1st to August 31st, 2009.

The team of Kolor will make a first selection to keep the photos that fit the resolution and format requirements. In September, the jury will meet to choose the 150 panoramas that will be published in the book. Our graphic designer will then integrate the images into the book layout. A period of about 2 weeks will be necessary to check that all names and comments were correctly reproduced into the book. In October and November, the book will be printed. It is expected to be sold on our website by the end of November.


Good luck! Upload entries to the Panobook 2010 site and also share entries here too!

Asher
 
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