The largest picture in the world

The largest picture in the world

The largest picture in the world. We all know that there are many huge things in this world, which may reach a level that we cannot imagine. Isn’t this a picture that is claimed to be the largest in the world? Let’s share how big the largest picture in the world is. The world's largest picture 1

Decrypt the world's largest photo

Using an airplane hangar as a camera and developing it in a swimming pool, six American artists spent 5 years photographing the world's largest picture The biggest photo on.

"Macroview: The Great American Photography Exhibition" is an exhibition with only one photograph. This photo hangs in the lobby of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum. From a distance, it looks like a Chinese ink painting. The world's largest photo was taken by a large American photography team using the world's largest camera. It's so big that you need to look up, and it's so big that you're filled with doubts: Is this a photo? Yes, imaging using camera principles. Is this a painting? Yes, because there are a lot of emotions painted on it. Is this art? Yes, because it is the work of 6 artists.

The past, present and future of Tolo Base

Mark Chamberlain, Robert Johnson, Clayton Spada, and Jereb Chifield all teach in California, USA Cypress Institute, like Douglas McCullough and Jacques Garnier, is an artist, curator, educator and photographer. The team of 6 is also called the Heritage Project Team.

Jereb, who died in 2009, was the founder of the group. He compiled original documents from the abandoned Tolo Marine Corps Air Base in the United States. After more than a year of application, in 2002, six artists received permission to go to Tolo Base to launch the "Heritage Project" and capture the legend here through photography.

The Tolo base is in Southern California, only 65 kilometers away from downtown Los Angeles, only separated from the Pacific Ocean by the San Joaquin Mountains, and located in the center of a basin facing the sea.

Originally this was the place where Indian tribes lived. After the Spanish expedition arrived in 1769, they began grazing and distributed large tracts of land to landowners. The Mexican Revolution that broke out in 1821 allowed Mexicans to take over the place. From 1850 to the present, this place belongs to the United States. In 1851, James Irving used the money he earned during the gold rush to build the "Irving Ranch".

In December 1941, just a few days after Japan launched the U.S. attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy decided to build a major air force base on the west coast. They set their sights on the perfect inland valley of Owen Ranch, where the fog along the coastal beaches provided natural cover. In December 1942, the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro was completed.

From agricultural land to commercial land to military land, this air force base played a leading role in the [Vietnam] War and the Gulf War. But in 1993, Tolo was also included in the list of closed military bases. There was a lot of political wrangling over whether to build an airport or a park after the closure. “After many lawsuits, media debates and four separate elections, the decision was finally made to create a giant park larger than New York’s Central Park. That’s when we became involved in the land,” Clayton said.

In order to connect the past, present and future of the land, they photographed the 1,800 buildings on the base and every inch of the surrounding land. They walked every runway, lingered in front of dark buildings, and photographed the various changes in the land from hovering helicopters. They go back and forth between the two photography modes, taking archival photos to record the real situation, and taking artistic photos to travel through reality. They have taken 150,000 photos, more than 100 hours of video, published 3 books, held 19 exhibitions, and set a Guinness World Record for the largest photo in history.

Turning a hangar into a camera

In 2006, the Heritage Project team discovered that an abandoned F-18 military jet fighter hangar was ideally suited to be converted into a camera. The world's largest camera. "It's very dark inside, suitable for a camera obscura. If we want to use a camera to actually take photos, only small holes must let in light, and the rest of the place is completely dark," Mark said.

In order to achieve absolute darkness, they and volunteers spent thousands of hours blocking all the pores in the hangar. Douglas said: "This job is very boring, the workload is heavy, and it is very tiring." After using up 7,316 square meters of black plastic sheeting, 4,940 liters of foam padding, 4.6 miles of black tape, and 20 liters of black spray paint, the world's largest darkroom was built. It was blocked.

Since we want to use the pinhole imaging principle, we need to repeatedly test how big the pinhole should be. Clayton said: "The size of the pinhole will determine the image quality. The edge of the pinhole is not smooth, which will also affect the image quality." In the end, they decided to use 6 mm as the pinhole diameter. The pinhole was 4.6 meters above the ground. There was no lens or other optics. facility. After three months of hard work, they finally modified it into a camera that is 49.23 meters long, 24.23 meters wide and 13.46 meters high.

Robert said that the film used in cameras is completely useless to them: "We have to make something new. We specially ordered a 1079 square meter unbleached seamless canvas from Germany." Because of the light transmission, So you have to brush the photosensitive emulsion first, and you have to heat it before brushing.

On July 7, 2006, 100 people and a high-capacity submersible pump worked simultaneously to apply 80 liters of photosensitive emulsion onto the canvas by hand.

“With so many people completing this work in total darkness, the answer is a miracle.” Jacques said. The canvas is 3 stories high and 11 stories wide. It needs to be placed in the right place to create an image. The film plus the suspension rigging weighed 545 kilograms. "Some of the previous ideas turned out to be completely unfeasible in actual operation." It was a miracle that the film finally managed to hang well.

So Robert said: "What's very interesting to us is that we make the camera, we make the film, we work inside the camera."

"God you Come out quickly!”

I have the camera and film, but I have no idea how long the exposure time will be. They first went online to ask for answers. Some said the minimum was one and a half hours, the maximum was 2 days, and others said the maximum exposure was 22 days. "We finally figured out that no one really knew. In the end, the only way was an old method that photographers have been using for so many years: use test shots to try." Douglas said. 1 hour, 2 hours, 5 hours... They tried different exposure times, but unfortunately they all failed because the image was too dark. Douglas said it was like a student writing a paper and the hard drive crashed.

After more experiments, they realized that the failure was due to the exposure time being too long and it becoming too dark. "So the person who told us that the exposure was 22 days was absolutely a big mistake and it definitely couldn't have been more than an hour." Douglas said.

At 11:30 on July 8, 2006, the six artists returned to the camera, opened the lens, and sat under the small hole for 35 minutes, which was the exposure time they determined after exhaustive testing. "For a photographer, it feels very honored to be able to work in a camera that I made." Douglas said, "We are very stressed and are afraid of any interruption during the imaging process." Douglas said that after all, this is not like using a digital camera. Just open it and click it.

After taking the photo, you still need to rinse it in the huge swimming pool. Jacques would only describe the flushing process as magical and chaotic. "A total of 1,800 barrels of developer and fixer were used. The development process required 40 people, and 40 other people were doing other work inside. Finally, two double-barreled fire water guns with a flow rate of 2,850 liters per minute were used to develop the photos 45 Minutes."

You must know that these six are not young guys, and the hangar is completely closed and completely dark. In summer, the temperature is as high as 45 degrees Celsius or even 48 degrees Celsius. The people inside are shouting and making a lot of noise. Very crazy. "The smell of various chemical reagents is very pungent." Jacques said.

"God, please come out quickly!" Clayton shouted in his heart, "When the canvas is wet, it is very dark. I am very scared, very scared. This is just the only chance." The canvas is hung After getting up, everyone was very happy to see the images starting to appear. Eight months of hard work left them with mixed feelings.

The airport control tower and dual runways in front of the hangar, the mountains, fields behind, and the beach in the distance were taken into the largest photo in history - 32.74 meters long and 9.45 meters wide. They took it It’s called the “big picture.”

This photo alone cost $65,000. They called all their friends and used their connections to raise funds. Before creation, they sold ideas, and later they sold limited edition "big photos" that were 1.3 meters long and 0.8 meters wide. "It costs US$2,500 each, limited to 20 copies, signed by everyone." Jacques said that the emulsion supplier also waived US$900.

"Our production process itself is a documentary, or a review of the history of photography. It starts with the most primitive pinhole imaging principle, and then brushes the photosensitive emulsion by hand. After the photo is formed, countless viewers use digital cameras to take photos again. This work was then known to people all over the world.” But Douglas said they have been debating whether this is the grave of past photographic records or a sign of a new era of photography. But for them, the greatest power of art is not to give an answer, but to raise new questions. The largest picture in the world 2

The largest picture was taken at the White Lang Bee.

Details such as the summit cable car and climbers were captured clearly.

This is the largest photo in the world that you can currently see. Photographed by an international team led by Italian photographer filippoblengini in Blangfeng. If printed using general digital laser technology at 300dpi (abbreviation for dotsperinch, i.e. the number of dots printed per inch), it would be as big as a football field.

When it comes to panoramic photos, I believe no one will be unfamiliar with them now. Basically, all mobile phones with relatively good configurations will provide this function. Although panoramic photos are very common, I believe a 365 billion pixel panorama will still give you a shocking feeling. This world's largest panorama took a professional team two weeks to complete. In total, more than 70,000 photos were taken, and the capacity of these photos alone reached an astonishing 46tb (1tb=1024gb).

The location where the material was taken was near the snow-capped Mont Blanc on the border between Italy and France.

In order to get the best visual effects, the filming team braved the wind and snow at minus 10 degrees Celsius, carrying heavy equipment and arduously trekked to the top of a peak 3,500 meters above sea level. They placed the filming equipment at the selected location and conducted all-round continuous shooting for more than 35 hours.

The post-processing and splicing of the photos took the team two months. If printed at a resolution of 300dpi, the 365 billion-pixel panoramic image could cover a football field. The world’s largest picture 3

Shanghai Jingkun Technology (Big Pixel Studio) launched a picture that is claimed to be the world’s largest: 195G pixels! That’s right, it’s 10,000 times higher than the “high pixel” 20MP ones on the market!

The photo was taken at the Oriental Pearl Tower

The great thing is that you can continuously zoom in on the details

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You can also zoom in a little more

Compare the original image, this is an amazing magnification! What they actually use is not a lot of high technology, but they use ordinary cameras (presumably the top ones on the market, but I didn't say) with a telephoto lens to divide the entire picture into thousands of pictures, and use precise control of the viewfinder, bit by bit. Photographed and then "sewed" using software.

The shooting process lasted several hours, and then took several months to process and "stitch" each frame. It's really hard work.

I remember that more than ten years ago, I met an awesome person on the Internet. He used the Canon 40D and 70-200/2.8 lens of that year to take 50 pictures of a scene and then "sewed" them together. Already astonished. He is an electronic engineer. Could it be that he founded Jingkun Technology?

The company has now successfully captured a niche market. Many major cities in the world hire them to make large-scale promotional photos. More than 70 cities have hired them, including Hong Kong, Beijing, Reykjavik, Zurich, New York, and the Vatican.