| ABOUT the Panoramas 2: 360° Light |  |
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Some of the initial panoramic experimenting had taken place on Chris' local Sussex South Downs. With the Barbican commission completed he returned to the Downs to resume that strand of work:
"The rural trials had an altogether different feel about them. Particularly striking was the way that, because of the all-round view, different sections of an image would, of necessity, have the light coming from different directions. Clearly, this had been true of the Barbican shots too - or the daylight ones anyway - but on the Downs the folds in the landscape and, especially the sunlit trees, made it much more apparent. So, whilst trees at one point might be silhouetted against the sun, those halfway across a 360° image would be in full sunlight.".
This is well illustrated in one of the earliest completed panoramas, "At Chanctonbury Ring":
The arrangement of light and shadow here warrants closer examination: Chris positioned the camera so that the sun was immediately behind the skinny, straight tree one third of the way in from the left hand side. Clearly then that tree's shadow is coming directly towards the camera.
Less obvious however, is that the same shadow, having passed beneath the camera, is then picked up again, half way through the 360° turn, this time receeding away. (ie. the shadow of the crown of the tree at the right side of the image...).
Similarly, the shadow of the largest tree passes close to (but not under) the camera. So by the same token, whilst it starts more-or-less towards the camera it ends up more-or-less receeding away from it and, like the balcony wall at the Barbican, is curved, to compensate.
A year or so later the UK's Professional Photographer magazine cited this image in particular when they announced Chris as winner of the Landscape section of their Professional Photographer of the Year awards.
| ABOUT the Panoramas 2: 360° Light | |
Page 2 of 4 | |