Text by Wythe Marschall
Through five panoramic photographs, artist Joergen Geerds explores the interconnections of space and community, humans and habitats, inside and out, self and other.
The German Consulate General is opening “Luminous New York — Photography by Joergen Geerds”, a series of large scale night panoramas of New York City in the lobby of the German House. The show opens on Monday, January 30, 6PM with a reception with the artist (RSVP to germanconsulatenyc[at]gmail.com) and is open to the public during normal consulate hours until February 21, 2012.
Click to see the whole tour of the Gizmodo Gallery 2011
Xperia Studio approached me a while ago for this project, to feature the Xperia Phones in an unusual way. Being a panorama photographer, and very interested in all things 360, I came up with a way to use 6 Xperia Neo’s (with fisheye lenses attached) to shoot a 360 video. And since every movie (or image) should should tell a story, we decided to shoot the 360 video on a mountain bike in one of the most interesting mountain bike trails in the western US: Slickrock at Moab, Utah. In order to keep the phones together, and have them survive the pretty rough ride, I designed a custom rig, and printed it on a Ultimaker 3D printer. Special thanks to Daniel Finkler, who helped me out by writing a custom Android app to start/stop the video recording via Bluetooth, and to Mark Sevenoff of Western Spirit, who is a great mountain biker, and offers very interesting bike tours in the western US.
Head over to Xperia Studio to see the Go Wide Or Go Home 360 Video , and the three behind-the-scenes videos that explain a bit more what I was doing.
Far Rockaway residents were just hesitantly preparing on Friday night for the mandatory evacuation, and only a couple of home owners had boarded up their house. The residents of the Seaview Manor were moved to a new and safer location inland.
I am happy to announce my first solo show in Europe: my exhibit is part of Palmela 2011 – The International Panoramic Photography Festival, where I am also one of the guest speakers.
The show consist of 15 large panoramas of New York and Chicago, exhibited around the cloister of the hotel:
Verrazano Bridge from Fort Hamilton
Cleopatra’s Needle (Wiki) isn’t really associated with Cleopatra, and predates her quite a bit (1450BC), and Wiki has the full story about how it got to New York in 1880… it may very well be the oldest human-crafted object out in the public in NYC.
The view from the castle, which is an odd piece of architecture in my opinion to begin with, is really nice, especially the view of the Delacorte Theater and the Turtle Pond, which didn’t seem to have any ducks on ice at the moment.
I met Chiezo and her husband at the Pool Art Fair 2010 in Miami Beach. Her work is lovely intricate, and has a huge amount of geekdom attached to it, and tells a huge overarching story of 3 traveling robots. I love her work, and I hope she will find a gallery soon.
In the meantime, visit chiezo.jp
I am very happy to announce that I will be exhibiting a couple of my large panoramas at the AQUA ART FAIR MIAMI, 532 Gallery, Room 204, from December 2-5, 2010. If you are in town for the Art Basel, swing by the Aqua Hotel for more art.
I will show the following 4 large (96in/243cm wide) panorama prints (edit: we ended up showing only the Time Square panorama, it was too difficult to rehang it):
More and more of the “old school” vendors vanishing from the board walk, some due to code violations, some probably don’t get their leases extended… probably part of the “clean up” project, where nobody is sure where it’s going. I just wanted to take the opportunity to photograph it in it’s current form before it’s all gone and replaced by something completely different.
Chicago looks so very different than NYC at night, slightly different colors, different windows, different people.
People ask me sometimes what panorama head they should get, and since my panorama head has gone through a strange evolution through-out the years (mostly making it stronger), I can only recommend getting a really good panorama head right away, and not waste money on things that won’t last at least 3-5 digital camera generations… that means no plastic parts whatsoever. If you are beginning with panorama photography, and not completely sure about spending money on a panorama head, I recommend building your own for $20 from wood and other cheap material, and then buy a real one. If you have problems with your no-parallax-point calibration, Alain Hamblenne has posted probably the best/easiest tutorial I’ve seen.
Here is my review of panorama heads that I think are worth the money.
(discontinued, get one for cheap)
Nodal Ninja 5 with RD16 and EZ Leveler
Despite the fact that the NN5 is discontinued (Summer of 2010), it is a great panorama head, especially when combined with the RD16 rotator base. It has no problems with larger workloads (no problem with a 100-300mm sigma or a 70-200 2.8 canon), and it’s quite good at vibration dampening from the mirror slap. If you are planning longer exposures (i.e. night photography), set the mirror lockup to 2 sec or longer, since it takes 2 sec for the vibration to dissipate. It is equally good with lighter/shorter lenses/cameras.
The 5 Pointz Building is ever evolving, and sometime between 2006 and 2010 the exterior stairs were removed, probably too many people tried to climb up there, and they weren’t really suitable for climbing anymore. My previous panorama from this location has become a historical document, because it would be impossible to redo it (due to the lack of said staircase).
Interestingly, the owner/manager tries to manage what is going on in the building much better by now:
Astoria, like so many other boroughs, is changing rapidly, especially the water front is being rapidly developed, while some other streets are not in fashion yet (even if they are just a block away). This leads to a very strange patchwork of architecture (as if Queens architecture isn’t challenged enough already).
The Toren Condo, designed by SOM, is one of the more modern approaches to architecture in NYC, something that seemed to be missing in the last couple of decades of architecture here. It is great to see change.
The view from the Brooklyner is great, because it’s the tallest residential building in Brooklyn, if I am not mistaken. You can see Staten Island, the Statue of Liberty, Downtown and Midtown (and probably Queens) from the rooftop. Metrotech is also right there, and am not sure what’s up with the blue light on their rooftop, but it looks cool, compared to all the other light sources of Brooklyn. Many thanks to Dan who was so kind to ask me if I would like to get access to the roof.
This is my contribution to the gigapixel race, and it is probably the currently largest night panorama of the Brooklyn Bridge, spanning from Staten Island to the River Cafe and Music Barge.
For those technically inclined, the image is 5.7 gigapixel (and about 1.5 gigapixel of “meaningful content”, if you subtract water and sky, but I feel they are important for the composition). The shoot took about 3 hours during a wonderful summer night. I am planning to get this printed some time in the future, and it will be for sale in two sizes: 240x60in/610x152cm (in 2 panels) and 480x120in/1220x304cm (in 8 panels).
