gloda.net

Tag: Canterbury

  • Canterbury photolocations

    [kml_flashembed fversion=”8.0.0″ movie=”http://gloda.net/pb/20090325canterbury/2009.swf” targetclass=”flashmovie” publishmethod=”static” width=”740″ height=”547″ wmode=”transparent” base=”.” /]
    One of the last meetings I organized as photography president of the University of Kent Photography and Modelling Society was an exploration of the places in Canterbury that would be best suited, from my point of view, for photographers to shoot, be it because they are worthwile in their own right or because they offer themselves as nice backdrops for photoshootings with models. First we went up to the Westgate panorama tower which is part of the Westgate Museum, as most participants had not yet been up there and it’s only around 75p for students to go. Then we made our way to Greyfriars, a former monastry which has its nondescript entrance in Stour Street. Some of the monastry’s walls still stand and it’s a nice park-like place to hang out and just read too. From there we went to Canterbury Castle, or the remains of it rather. It was used by a gas company decades ago and they knocked through some of the walls to get their pipelines installed.
    While we were there the rainclouds which are inevitable when I organize a phototrip caught up with us and we returned to town centre to take shelter in Starbucks. — What? Which one of the three? :)

  • 180 Megapixel Westgate Panorama

    [kml_flashembed movie=”http://gloda.net/pb/20090221westgate/zoomifyViewer.swf” wmode=”transparent” fvars=”zoomifyImagePath=http://gloda.net/pb/20090221westgate& ; zoomifyNavigatorVisible=true ; SRC=http://gloda.net/pb/20090221westgate/zoomifyViewer.swf ; BGCOLOR=#000000 ; MENU=false ; PLUGINSPAGE=http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash” WIDTH=”740″ HEIGHT=”493″ NAME=”theMovie”/]
    At the end of February I lugged my camera and tripod up to the flagtower of Canterbury’s Westgate. The tower isn’t accessible to the public and it took a while to get permission to shoot from this wonderful vantage point, which offers one of the best views of the cathedral and the city centre. So I climbed the metal steps past an owl statuette that’s meant to scare away the pigeons and got my tripod set up next to the flagpole. It’s not hard to tell why Westgate’s highest tower isn’t open for the average Canterbury tourist: there’s only about half a metre of space on any side of the flagpole and the wall surrounding it wasn’t very high either.
    First off I took the above panorama looking south with the 70-200. It consists of 48 individual photos that were stitched together in PTgui. The resulting panorama had 180 Megapixel – with over 50’000 pixel length it was beyond the limitations of either JPEG or PSD files and I had to save it in Adobe’s large file format (PSB). The version above has been resized to just over 27000px wide.
    After that I got out my trusted Peleng 8mm Fisheye lens to create a 360/180° QTVR image looking north onto St Dunstan’s Road, which you can see below. These panoramas are taken in the same way as other panoramas, except that the camera makes a full 360° rotation looking down, then straight ahead, then up. Unfortunately I don’t (yet) have a QTVR panorama head in my camera bag, which is necessary to match the camera’s nodal point with the axis of rotation. That’s why the panorama below has some rather ugly glitches – have a look at the stairs, for instance.
    [kml_flashembed fversion=”8.0.0″ movie=”http://gloda.net/pb/20090221westgate/20090221north.swf” targetclass=”flashmovie” publishmethod=”static” width=”740″ height=”547″ wmode=”transparent” base=”.” /]

  • DPC Canterbury GTG

    [kml_flashembed movie=”http://gloda.net/pb/20080607_dpcgtg/pb.swf” height=”529″ width=”720″ wmode=”transparent”/]
    For some reason it has rained at each and every DPChallenge get-together I’ve been to over the last year. No surprise then that the one I hosted myself didn’t greet us with sunshine. Even so Dain McGowan came all the way down to Canterbury to explore the city and the cathedral with me and Sebastian Andersson. In the afternoon we went up to campus to take photos at Artsfest.