New York photographer David Bergman has cornered the market capturing epic moments in world history with his Gigapan images. Bergman's 1,474 megapixel Gigapan of President Obama's inauguration has been viewed over 15 million times by people in 210 countries. His latest classics are being compiled at the 2012 London Olympic games showing the Opening Ceremonies and inside the Aquatics Center during competition.
By David Bergman
My first Gigapan from the 2012
London Olympics is now online. You’ll find it in three different places.
It’s on the official NBC Olympics website, Sports Illustrated’s site, and it was even on
the cover of Time.com earlier today.
I made the Gigapan by shooting
425 images in a grid pattern (25 across by 17 down) with a Nikon
D4 and 200-400 f/4 lens (zoomed to about 310mm) in a Gigapan
Epic Pro. Each photo is 16 megapixels so, with a little bit of
overlap on each one, the final high-resolution image is 81,992 X 37,520—more
than three billion pixels.
I’ve made a lot of Gigapans,
but this was one of my toughest. I like to challenge myself - otherwise it
would be boring - but I’ll admit that I was sweating this one out a bit.
Since I shoot every frame
manually, it can take 30-60 minutes to make one complete pass. I made one early
in the ceremony when there was still some daylight and the crowd was nicely
lit.
But I really wanted to have the
athletes (and the Queen!) in the photo.
So when the athletes began
marching into the stadium, I shot a complete pass for the sole purpose of
getting the crowd. Those cool LED lights on the seats obscure some faces, but
there was nothing I could do about that.
As the infield filled up, I
went back and began photographing the athletes. At the very end, when everyone
was finally there, I had about 30 seconds to finish up before they killed all
the lights and went on with the show. I just barely got enough frames to make
it work.
Overnight, I stitched together
two complete Gigapans and then combined them so I had all the fans with the
athletes on the field in the same photo.
The image is far from perfect
as you’ll find quite a few stitching errors. I fixed many of them but every
time someone moves between frames, there’s potential for a cut off head or half
a body. Sorry to anyone I sawed in half.
I did make sure the Queen,
William, Kate, and Harry all look OK! Otherwise they may not have let me out of
the country.
In the end, I’m pretty happy
with the result, considering that I stay up all night to get these massive
Gigapans uploaded first thing in morning.
Tonight I’m doing another one
at the swimming final. It’s a smaller venue, which can be difficult, but at
least I won’t have to worry about cutting off the Queen’s head!
Here is a link to Bergman's Gigapan shot inside the Aquatics Center.