What Comes After Panoramic Photos?

Wind back the clock 15 years. Imagine yourself wiping the sweat off your brow after the close call that was the “Y2K Millenium Bug”… Phew, that was a close one wasn’t it?

You take a glance down at your phone, thankful to be alive and decide to give your folks a call to express how grateful you are for planes not falling out of the sky and computers not spontaneously combusting around us.

You finish the call, and decide to take selfie to celebrate the moment… wait? A what? What’s a selfie!!? Yup, that’s right, there really wasn’t such a thing as a “Selfie” back then. Sure people used to take pictures of themselves using cameras pointing the wrong way, but these weren’t globally known as selfies, they weren’t splattered in front of our vision every waking moment of every waking day. They were an occasional bad photo amongst an album, or a snap from a web cam as they increasingly became popular.

Selfies didn’t exist, and frankly, that was no bad thing. After all, we got through it ok, didn’t we?

So, fast forward a number of years to 2010 say, and another type of photo crops up. A type of photo that again, has already been in existence, but isn’t widely used outside of professional photography and magazine shoots. That type of photography is the…

Panorama

The panorama photo was barely seen, let alone taken before Apple got in on the scene and decided to incorporate it as part of your phone technology (the same phones that were just used for snake, phone calls and text messaging some 10 years prior). Yes, that’s right, this little seen photographic technique was becoming mainstream, and to be fair it made complete sense.

Think about it. Our televisions were getting wider, our phone screens were getting wider (or longer if you like), so it makes perfect sense for our pictures to get wider as well. After all, the internet was getting to a point where large files could be shared easily, and high resolution photography could be seen within a few seconds.

So the more you can fit in, the better, right?

Well, yes to a certain extent. Panoramic photography captures more “stuff” and it’s incredible for capturing scenes such as landscapes. It also allows the viewer to get a more involved feeling. Seeing a whole room, as opposed to a small square makes you feel part of the image. Being able to fit an entire crowd into a single photo, rather than seeing one chap holding up a banner with “I love you Kylie” on it, has got to be better.

Don’t get me wrong though; the standard photography dimensions are important for detailed photography. For close ups and for portraits. But where is photography headed? Are we on a crazed mission for more and more “things” in one image?

The Future

Mankind seems to be on a continuous mission to fit more into less, and the panoramic photo is a perfect example of that. It allows you to experience a lot more in a lot less time. You can even grab yourself a panoramic canvas (at a reduced price at the time of print) to display your wears in your house.

So they’ve taken the step from obscurity, to main stage in our homes. Replacing the standard square photos which don’t really take up the space on your wall to full effect, with wide sweeping images that flow from one side of the room to another.

In a way, they provide a window to a landscape that isn’t there.

Whether they’ll continue to keep growing in size is thankfully limited to the 360 degree limit. After all, once you go over this point, you’re just capturing the same parts of the image as you were before… and I think they call that “Wallpaper”.

Wallpaper photography, the next big thing?

This content piece was written by photography student Lisa Davis. Lisa is currently studying for a fine arts degree and takes time out to explore landscape photography and disused buildings, which are then translated into blog pieces.

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