Recently I have been going out on very dark nights to capture images of our home, The Milky Way. If you get a chance, check out my Milky Way video on my Cam Marcus Photography Facebook page.

Sometimes, however, I do take my camera out during the day!

A few years back I was working in Fort Worth, Texas. For a fun project, I challenged myself to use the city as the subject for my “Vibrant City” photo series.

This is a very different project from The Milky Way, but still fun in a different way. If you do nothing else on this page, watch the video – I am sure you have never seen a city portrayed in quite the same way.

The still images that make up this video are available in my Gallery.

These images are a great addition to any home or office! Most of them are made up of 20 - 30 individual photographs that are stitched together. The resolution allows for enlargements to very large sizes. Please contact me for custom, large sizes, or an image of mine that you have see that is not found in my Gallery.

Here is how the project first started:

Since the buildings in a downtown area completely surround you, I wanted to convey that feeling in the photographs. I decided on shooting a series of shots in a circle and then stitching them together. That gave me a flat panoramic view of the buildings, but did nothing to give the “surround” feeling of buildings all around you. In an attempt to convey that surround feeling, I converted the whole thing to what is known as a “polar” projection.

The Courthouse pictured here is an example of what I am talking about. This image is made up of about 24 pictures taken to make up the entire circle.

The shots were made from the middle of the street. I had to do this one on Sunday, a day with little traffic, as I really wanted to avoid being hit by a car, or bus!

The difficult thing about these shots is that since you are shooting a complete circle, you have to deal with both shooting into and away from the sun.

To deal with this problem, I had two choices: shoot HDR (High Dynamic Range), or, try and bring out the details and color of the darkened areas in Photoshop. The HDR option would mean 5, or more shots at each of the 24 positions it takes to make the circle. Since I was standing in the middle of the street, I decided if I wanted to live to see this project to its completion, I would do well by not standing in the middle of the street any longer than necessary!

The Photoshop option became the obvious choice.

When I first started working with the images, I tried to keep the colors muted to maintain a realistic look. After spending a little time with the images, though, I began to think, why am I doing this? These images are anything BUT realistic. So I started experimenting.

The accompanying image is an interesting example. Originally the construction crane in the top right was very dark. By brightening it up I was able to add some color to an otherwise dark area of the photograph.

In this picture you can also see what I mean about the 360 degree nature of these images. The sun is reflected off of the tower, top left – while the sun itself is seen above the building at the lower right. In a “normal” picture it is unusual to see both the sun AND its reflection. In 360 degree shots, it is not unusual.

What does any of this have to do with the video?

The video that is on the top of this page is an attempt to do something completely different in order to show off the City of Fort Worth.

Once I had my still images I did not want to simply put together a slide show, I wanted to give an animated view of the city – but an animation that would not be a simple, boring, run-of-the-mill type of thing.

Without giving it all away (in case you haven’t watched the video), I decided to start the video off with a still black and white image of Fort Worth’s Main Street. That would transition into color and start moving in an animated fashion.  From there I would transition to the round images (for the video I used spheres, rather than the polar shots) and wind up zooming back down Main Street.

With my overall plan in place, off I went to get the time lapse sequence for the start of my video.  As you will see in the video (if you haven’t already seen it), there is construction going on at the far end of the street. Normally this would not be an issue.

Unfortunately for me it did become a problem. I shot 1,500 frames for the animation, which I thought would be enough. But – it wasn’t. I needed a few hundred more frames to fill in. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the construction had moved further down the street! That wouldn’t have been so bad, but they closed the entire section of the street where they were working.

I decided to try and made it work anyway. When I got back to the computer with my new images – new problem. The trees had filled in!! There was no way to use these images as “fill” in a time lapse; the trees would instantly be full of leaves.

If you haven’t watched the video yet – you really should before I tell you how I resolved this problem, because after I do, you will quickly pick up the flaw...

...Hopefully everyone who is still with me here has seen it, because it will never be the same when I tell you what it did… To resolve the issue, I repeated the time lapse about midway through. If you don’t know about it, you really don’t notice it (I tried it out on a few friends). Now that you do know about it –you’re going to see it if you watch carefully. Once you see it, you’ll ALWAYS notice it.

I had a great time putting these images and video together. I hope that you enjoy them, too. Don't forget to stop by my Gallery - These images really look great on a wall in any home or office 🙂 ...They make great gifts, too!