Panosuarus

Stourbridge Common, Cambridge
click here for a larger version

I've been interested in panoramic and joined-up pictures for a long time (see my 'Orford Ness' project), and prompted by a colleague at work I've bought a Panosaurus panoramic head for my tripod. The unit itself takes a little initial setting up, but once it's done you've got an inexpensive and efective way of taking multi-row panoramas around your camera's nodal point (i.e. no parallax errors) (thorough description here)

The above panorama is taken on Stourbridge Common in Cambridge, by the river(google earth link here). Now it's just an open common area with the Museum of Technology and housing along the south and west sides, and the railway line to Ely along the east. Stourbridge Fair used to be held on the site - although it's a grazing common now, it used to be Europe's largest fair, and is where Isaac Newton bought his prism.

I had been thinking about how digital photography tends to make photography a bit more disposable and throwaway, and how it would be nice to slow down a bit more; this sort of photography does just that, standing in one place turning the tripod head incrementally around, repositioning the camera's vertical angle. It also makes you think in a different way about composition - I deliberately placed myself in the middle of a path to get the distinctive sweeping 'W' shape: the areas to the extreme left and right of the image are actually directly behind the area at the centre of the image. It produces an impossible perspective.