It is nice to have projects aside from the routine work. It makes you to connect with people outside your professional networks, which is definitely good. Since I had all that equipment for panoramic photography which I adapted for art documentation, I figured out it would have been fun to use it for actually photograph panoramas. And since I live in a beautiful land, it seemed a great idea. So, I started my first project on Indiegogo.com. Not that I expect much funding but I like the idea of commitment intrinsic to going public with a crowdfunded project. It will not cost me that much effort and I could say I did my little bit to disseminate knowledge about my homeland. Sicily!
“Sicily Panoramas” is a crowd-funded project to bring to the world high-resolution Panoramas of Sicily sceneries.
The project is hosted by Indiegogo “Sicily Panoramas”
I want make 30 gigantic (at least 150,000 pixel width) Panoramas of Sicilian sceneries, architectures, landscapes and arts. The panoramas will be available on the internet for everybody to watch and discover Sicily. Funders will have access to printing and file downloading and can ask for a specific location to be photographed.
Doing this kind of gigantic images requires skills and dedicated hardware which I own since I used the same methods for my work in fine art technical documentation. This is my blog, Cultural Heritage Science Open Source.
I was born and raised in Sicily. Studied there, took, my degree and PhD in Physics and as many of my colleagues I went abroad looking for opportunities. There are very few of them in Sicily, especially if you hold a high educational degree. I worked most of the time in US, as a “Cultural Heritage Scientist”, I do scientific examination of works of art for conservation and authentication. Last Fall I decided I wanted to go back home in Sicily and with the little money I saved I started up my own private business. It’s tough and a lot of traveling, since my customers are all across Europe, but when I get back home, I see my family and all that effort makes sense.
Sometimes ago I was reading a local newspaper “La Sicilia” and I found that one big page was used for a touristic ads about visiting Sicily. Why the Sicilian Regional Tourism Office spends money to put an ads on a local newspaper read only by Sicilians? We want others around the world to know about Sicily, no?
I’m now based in Sicily. Most of my university colleagues, the most brilliant, actually, left the Country and found highly paid positions abroad. There is little left here. Most of the best brains are gone and Hope is dwindling.
I want to be proud of my Country, and I want innovative, effective and low-cost tools to show its beauty. I already use Panoramic HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography for paintings and fine arts documentation. Panoramic photography is a method to produce gigantic photographs while HDR (High Dynamic Range) allows to create photos with true colors.
THE IMPACT
Sicily is a land of contrasts. Social contrasts are well known. Less known are its sceneries colors and lights contrast. The sunlight strikes the land fearfully while shadows are pitch dark. This is Sicily sensorial experience. Though, until recently there was no way to render in photos this lights contrast. This is digital cameras limitation, where actually our eye is superior. The dynamic range of digital cameras is less than that of our eye. This means they can render details just in the bright areas or in the dark ones. The human eye is much more powerful in that sense. Our eye has a much wider dynamic range, so we can tell details simultaneously in bright sunlit areas and in the shadows. HDR Panoramas bring all this together.
Panorams will be geolocated, so these Panoramas gallery is going to have an impact how travelers choose locations in Sicily.
Keen to contribute ? visit the project on Indiegogo “Sicily Panoramas”
