Smile! You're on GigaPan camera

Here's your chance to be in one of the world's biggest and most detailed photos, and you don't have to crowd in with thousands of people to do it.

A team of "gigapanners" will be shooting tomorrow from atop the U.S. Steel Tower, Downtown, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., weather permitting.

They will be using a regular digital camera on a special GigaPan robotic mount that was designed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. The mount makes it possible to pan the horizon in incremental strips, horizontal and vertical. The result is thousands of explorable, multi-gigapixel pictures assembled on a computer to form an enormous 360-degree panorama.

To be in the photo, pick any spot that's visible from atop the U.S. Steel Tower -- including the right or left sides of the field in PNC Park during the Pirates game. Then, using Facebook or Twitter, let the team know where you'll be standing and at what time. You can even move around and be in multiple shots. Costumes, bright colors and signs are encouraged to help you stand out against the landscape.

For complete instructions on how to participate, go to http://studioforcreativeinquiry.org and click on Pittsburgh Gigapanorama Photo Shoot.

The image will be taken in four geographic segments on this approximate schedule: 11 a.m. to noon -- Oakland, the Hill District, South Side and points east; noon to 1 p.m. -- The Strip District, Lawrenceville and points north; 1 to 2 p.m. -- Station Square, Mount Washington, South Hills and points west; and 2 to 3 p.m. North Shore, PNC Park, and points north.

"It may not be the largest photo ever made but it will be right up there," said David Bear, who initiated the Pittsburgh Gigapanorama project at Carnegie Mellon's Studio for Creative Inquiry, with support from the Heinz Endowments and Sprout Fund. A former Post-Gazette travel editor, Mr. Bear also has been spearheading an effort to promote use of the top of the U.S. Steel Tower as a public park.

This will be the second Pittsburgh Gigapanorama. The first was taken last October, but without any attempt to populate it. The team actually printed a 23-foot-long copy last month and mounted it above the bar at the Sprout Fund Hot House party in the old Don Allen car dealership in Bloomfield, where it received a lot of attention.

Maybe too much. It was stolen 20 minutes after the event ended.

"The wait staff told us two guys who looked like crew just came in, unscrewed the mounts, rolled it up and took it," Mr. Bear said. "I think that constitutes the largest art theft in the history of Pittsburgh."

The photos are being done as experiments, he said.

"It's something that's never been done before by anybody, anywhere, so it's kind of cool."

The full size of last year's panorama was 249 feet long and 39 feet high.

"No computer screen is that big, so you can zoom in and get an incredible amount of detail. That's what makes it so special."

The team will be taking 11 different gigapans, he said, with as many as 8,000 individual images. The finished product should be online in late October for people to visit, find themselves and take a snapshot.

In addition, there will be a 4-foot-by-25-foot print of the image on display, along with other panoramas from the project, from Oct. 11 through Nov. 19 in the Photo Forum Gallery, upper lobby of the U.S. Steel Tower.

First published on September 22, 2010 at 12:00 am