Panoramic streetscapes.

[Ben R]

Hi,

I have in mind a large project photographing streetscapes in Jerusalem combined with a seperate and parallel project on street photography, etc.

Although I have been here for four months yesterday was the first time I'd actually got away from work to do any shooting. I took my DSLR in a walk around the Old City of Jerusalem 'scouting' out locations to bring my Gandolfi back for.

I found several ideas for photographs and snapped them from different perspectives so that I could go home and review which locations I would visit and when.

I had originally planned to shoot for a 4:5 format but the narrow alleyways made me think of cropping, I ended up cropping all the 'potentials' to 6X12 and I found that it worked far better than a 4:5 or 2:3 crop for these types of images.

I've never considered panorama before, never really appreciated it to be honest, but the format really seems to click with the images that I have in my mind.

Does anyone have any 6X12 street or city scapes to share, does anyone believe in pano as a format for the city?

A few snapshots taken with a 50mm on a 5D as I was walking along, cropped to 6X12 and IMO possibly worth following up and doing properly with LF.

www.studio-beni.net/street.jpg

[Ron Marshall]

These are approximately 6x12:

http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/turkeycinemascope1.php?sid=1

[tim810]

I have found that panoramas fit cityscapes much better than the more square formats. It is hard to find 8x10 framing. I started cropping to 4x10 and now just shoot 12x20 for cityscapes. I have found use for 6x20 for some things but need some time to mock something up for it so I can get 2 images on a sheet of film.

[Juergen Sattler]

These are approximately 6x12:

http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/turkeycinemascope1.php?sid=1

I like his panoramic work - very good eye for effective use of that format. His early work is too painterly for my taste

[Struan Gray]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkheadedbug/sets/944413/

[paulr]

Morris Engel did a bunch of wild panoramic street pictures of NYC in the 90s. I don't know if they've ever been exhibited. He was a friend of my grandmothers, and showed them to us not too long before he died. He was furious that he hadn't gotten famous for this work!

There are a couple here:
http://www.engelphoto.com/color.html

The ones I remember were a little more wild and interesting.

[Hiro]

With cityscapes and landscapes, I have felt on occasions a panoramic format would more "naturally" capture what I'm seeing in front of me. Since I learned about Bilge Ceylan's work, then saw Lyle Gomes' "Imagining Eden" exhibition (http://lylegomes.com/), I begun to evaluate some compositions for alternative panoramic format more consciously. Sometimes I ignore half of the GG and shoot.

To me the "right" format depends on the scene and how one sees it (maybe even on any given day), which makes photography interesting. I'll continue to experiment with an eye on the price for a 7x17...

[Gordon Moat]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/in_pictures_the_barrier_by_kai_wiedenhofer/html/6.stm

Kai Wiedenhöfer use to be a photographer with LookAt (Swiss) agency. He spent about a decade taking photos in the mid-east, often with an Xpan. There is a book called The Wall which contains many of these images. I don't know what agency he works through now, since it seems LookAt disolved.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)