‘In the round’

In 2014 Dad sent me an email that completely flipped my way at looking at photography.

I still remember opening the link and not being sure what I was looking at – but I knew I liked it and wanted more.

Pep Ventosa was the artists name. I’m not sure if I was more impressed with his work or his name. His images looked like a painter had captured some amazing time lapses. He uses 100’s of photos taken from every angle of a subject and layers them on top of each other in post production to make one final image. His work consists of urban scenes from around the world. Famous landmarks, trees and carousels. He coined the term “In the round” to describe this technique. The quote below sums things up nicely.

“I like exploring the space between photography and painting,
using photographs as raw material to create new visual experiences.”
Pep ventosa

Sounds awesome! What are some good subjects?

There is a large commitment with this technique (taking multiple photos then combining them in post production) so make sure you go through this mental check list before you start.

Does the subject dominate its surroundings?
Is there access to take photos around the subject?
Does the background have enough variety to add interesting detail?
Is there a lot of colour or interesting texture?
Is there a big contrast between the subject and the background?

I have found that the best scenes have one clear central focus point. Subjects that have varying backgrounds also increase the depth of the image because the details of the objects get washed out and add to the ‘painted’ look.

My first ever attempt

I’ve always admired the Cuba Street fountain. Ever since I discovered this technique I thought it would make a great subject as long as I could get over my anxiety of taking photos in busy places.

What makes it a great subject?

It dominates the area
It has great colours and textures
The surrounding buildings and people add great variety
It is iconic to Wellington
Good access all the way round.

Cuba Street Bucket Fountain, Wellington NZ

Blow-by-blow of how it went down

I waited for a sunny day so the colours would pop.
It was a Monday so there weren’t too many people getting in the way of where I wanted to stand.
I did a quick walk around the fountain to see how far away I needed to be to capture everything I wanted.
I then started snapping. I took my first photo and then took one step to my left and set up shop again. Rinse and repeat until I had gone 360 degrees.
I went between an aperture of F13-F22 so I could get a combination of crisp photos and ones with a little movement.
I ended up with 30 individual photos.

Assembling the image

I loaded each photo and adjusted the white balance and exposure to make sure they were even in every shot.
I then opened all 30 photos as separate layers on a white background. I adjusted the opacity to 10% in each layer. The higher the opacity the greater the detail. I felt that for this image 10% gave me the correct balance between soft detail and still being able to recognise the scene.
At this stage I evaluated whether I had hit my brief. Are all the elements there that I was hoping to capture? If not, how can I bring them out?
I then combined all visible layers and set about bringing my vision to life.

Adjustments made

When you combine this many images together the brightness drops. The first alteration I made was to bring back the overall brightness.
Increasing the contrast was next on my list to bring back some depth to the image. I achieved this by adjusting the contrast with a new curves layer. I applied this only to the fountain so it would ‘pop’ out from the background.
Now that I felt like I had the look I had imagined it was a case of bringing back the colour of the fountain buckets. I used the ‘vibrancy’ tool on the buckets themselves while slightly toning back the ‘saturation’ of the image around the fountain itself.
Finally I added a slight vignette to the image to frame the image

Final Thoughts

I like the way this image came out. It is still one of my standout images all these years later. I like the vibrant colours. I like the size of the fountain. I like that the scene is instantly recognizable but still abstract. The success of this first attempt has propelled me on to create many more. In future I will post up more ‘in the round’ images and break them down in more detail.