What sounds like a device from science fiction is gaining one local photographer a lot of real notice and notoriety.
The GigaPan tripod looks like a surveyor's transit but Dave Belcher calls it "the robot."
"It's a tripod plus a movable device that moves horizontally and vertically wherever you point the camera, and there's a device for tripping the shutter as well," he explains.
Belcher spent years working in the graphic arts industry and is no stranger to digital SLR (single lens reflex) cameras, even large format cameras. The GigaPan technology "takes it about 10 steps past that," he says.
GigaPan is a company formed in 2008 as a commercial spin-off of technology developed for Mars rovers by researchers at NASA and Carnegie Mellon University, according to www.gigapan.org. The term gigapan refers to gigapixel panoramas, meaning digital images with billions of pixels.
Belcher explains that the technology works by taking a series of individual photographs, each at about 10 megabytes in size. A computer program then "stitches" them together into one larger image.
One mountain scene he shot was actually comprised of 126 photos stitched together. The resulting GigaPan image ends up being about 86 centimetres by 51 centimetres (34 by 20 inches), although he says it could be faithfully reproduced even three times larger than that.
Some GigaPans that he's produced are comprised of more than 1,000 photos.
Belcher has spent the last few years practicing and perfecting his craft, while putting together a substantial portfolio of churches, cultural landmarks and events, and some places – like the aforementioned mountain scene – simply for their grandeur.
He admits that some of this otherwise personal project does have altruistic purposes. His small but growing collection of churches – including the St. Albert Parish and St. Joseph's Cathedral in Edmonton – is meant as a historical record should time or the elements ever affect their physical structures.
While the actual reproductions have some fairly stunning detail, it still pales in comparison to the digital files as seen on a computer. The viewer can zoom in, magnifying even the smallest aspects. A shot of St. Albert Parish, as taken from a vantage point somewhere in the parking lot near the bell tower, has enough detail in it to examine the paint chipping and cracking away on the small white cross on the back of the church.
The big picture
Belcher plans to continue adding to his repository of church photographs and is hoping to start adding interior shots as well.
One major hotel has taken notice of his work. The Coast Edmonton Plaza is in the process of exhibiting some of his scenic landscapes in an unusual gallery space.
"They'll be mounted, facing outside, in the spaces between the pillars of the parkade. Some of them will be 20 feet wide," Belcher said.
"They wanted to decorate the outside of the hotel."
He's also working on producing a large-scale calendar with 12 of his 86 x 51cm images.
