[360°, Ferryquay Gate, Christmas, Derry, Ireland, lights, night, panorama, street scene, stereographic, walled city, Panoramas of Ireland Calendar 2013,>500 >1000 >2000 >3,000 views, five features, Featured]

1. 18 th April 2013 View Count reached 3,003

1. 20th December 2012 featured for the fifth time, on this occasion in the group Best of RedBubble

1. 15th December 2012 featured for the fourth time, on this occasion in the group Streetscapes and mentioned on their forum

1. 26th Aug 2012 featured for the third time, on this occasion in the group The X-factor

The source images were shot on a Canon EOS 5d with a 16mm fisheye lens then these were stitched and blended together into a rectangular panorama using Hugin.

This 360° panoramic image was shot on Ferryquay Street in Derry, Northern Ireland in the early evening of New year’s day 2008. The Christmas decorations were still in place.

The dark street to the left is Artillery Street, with the Java coffee shop on the corner it leads up past the now refurbished Playhouse Theatre. To the right Market Street leads past the Halo Pantry and Grill to Derry‘s other major entertainment venue The Millenium Forum.

The large form in the lower part of the image is Ferryquay Gate – one of the four original archways through the shuttoric city walls.

Straight ahead lies Ferryquay Street leading, past the shoppers at the New Year sales to The Diamond, the centre of the walled city.

 

	This image is also available as part of a calendar
	Panoramic views of Ireland

 

History of this image on RedBubble

1. 10th March 2010 uploaded to RedBubble
2. 30th April 2010 viewed count reached 102
3. featured in the RedBubble group “Mini Galaxy”.
4. featured in “The World as we See it”.
5. 30th May 2011 viewed count reached 503
6. 26th Aug 2012 featured for the third time, on this occasion in the group The X-factor

1. 15th December 2012 featured for the fourth time, on this occasion in the group Streetscapes and mentioned on their forum

Quality
Because of the way that it was created this is a very high resolution image (the equivalent of about 80-megapixels). It is capable of delivering very fine detail even when printed at massive sizes.

Method
The panorama was created by combining 24 separate digital photographs covering every angle and with bracketed exposures. The camera was tripod mounted with a specialist pano-bracket to prevent parallax errors between shots.

The source images were shot on a Canon EOS 5d with a 16mm fisheye lens then these were stitched and blended together into a rectangular panorama using Hugin (a suite of free open source programs).

Six horizontal shots were taken at 60° intervals and one shot of the sky and one of the ground. Each ”shot” actually consisted of three bracketed exposures ranging from “under-exposed” by -2 stops to “over-exposed” by +2 stops. Hence (6 + 1 + 1)x3=24 shots all together.

Hugin then uses a program called “Enblend” to smooth the seams between the 8 shots making up one panorama and another program “Enfuse” to combine the multiple exposures and make the High Dynamic Range (HDR) panorama.

Finally that rectangular panorama is taken into a fresh Hugin session in which it is rendered as this characteristic shamrock shape by using a Stereographic transformation.

I have written a short journal entry introducing the method by which these panoramas are created, it is called:
“Creating a Stereographic Panorama – the Basic Idea”

Other Panoramas
I have three collections here of stereographic panoramas like this one, they are panoramas of:

Donegal	Derry
The Aran Islands