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| Photo by Ben Frederick |
| Click photo for the steps to this technique. |
When we first saw Ben Frederick's awesome globe photos at www.bkfphoto.com, we had no idea how he made them, but we assumed it was a very, very complicated process. So we called him -- and found out we could do it ourselves, with the help of some careful shooting, a panorama-stitching program, and Adobe Photoshop.
To make one of these circular pictures, start by picking an environment that looks cool all the way around. Bring a tripod, and set your camera up to take verticals. Practice first by rotating your camera and making sure that no trees or buildings are getting cut out of the frame, while having the ground take up a third of the image. When you're all set up, photograph the whole 360-degree panorama, overlapping each frame about a third of the way.
Frederick uses the software PTGui to do his stitching (€65 or about $88, direct), so that's what's shown here. But you can use any stitcher that makes 360-degree panoramas. The distinction is important because, when you form the long horizontal into a circle, you need the two ends to meet up seamlessly.
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