Shooting panoramas is not easy. Showcasing them in a book is even more challenging.
Panoramic pictures are usually defined as images with a horizontal dimension at least twice as large as its vertical dimension. Some panoramas are created by a specialized wide-format or rotational cameras, others by assembling multiple image segments, and some by cropping a large, wide-angle image vertically.
In terms of size and appearance, panoramas can be divided into:
Short panoramas – with the vertical to horizontal ratio of 1:2 to 1:4
Super long panoramas – with the vertical to horizontal ratio of 1:5 to 1:20
Spherical panoramas – depicting full immersion of 360 degrees horizontally and 180 degrees vertically
The main advantage of a spherical panorama is its immersion capability that can be shown best on a computer screen or on a projected curved wall display. Unfortunately, this representaton cannot be shown in a book, and a simplified flat version of spherical view looks too confusing and unappealing to most unitiated readers.
The super long panoramas can look spectacular on a wall in 10, 20 or even 50ft length, but again they are unsuitable for a publication.
This leaves us with short panoramas (1:2 to 1:4 image ratios), that can be printed satisfactorily in books.
Image size
Obviously, best book format for panoramic images is a landscape orientation – in size 8×12, 11×14, or larger.
Let’s assume that your panoramic image is a typical 1:2.5 – 1:3 format. In the pixel world, that would correspond with 6000 pixels wide and 2,000 pixels high. Printed at 300 dpi, this image will be 6.667 inch high and 20 inches wide. It will just fit into a two-page spread in a 8×12 book format. Including some white space around the image. If you want to print it from edge to edge (full bleed), as long as it was a sharp image to start with, it could be probably stretched to 8×24 size.
If you want a more impressive coffee-table format such as 10×14 inches, or even larger, you’ll need higher resolution pictures or you’ll need to uprezz the smaller images to 8,400×2,500 pixels.
Layout
The simplest layout for panoramic images is a two-page spread. The other option is to crop slightly the image in length and place it in middle of the page leaving some white space above and under the image, or placing the image in the top portion of the page, leaving enough space for some accompanying text below (or the other way around).
Or you could include two or more panoramic images on a page underneath each other. You wouldn’t want to do whole book in this way, since such a format would defeat the greatest strength of panoramic image – namely its size and impact. I find, that mixing the images in various layouts is a good way to make the book more appealing and keep the reader interested, so in my books, I often mix the three layouts above, even including some images in conventional 2:3 format. If you want to include longer panoramas, it is possible to insert longer pages in the middle of the signature, and double the effective length by folding both pages inwards. (A book signature is a section of sheets of printed paper folded in half, ready to be stitched – typically 16 pages per signature). However, this method requires specialized printing and binding, and such books have to be handled much more delicately.
Image Composition
Panoramic composition is often more difficult than the composition of a conventional 2×3 image, primarily because in a shorter image it is easier to focus on the main subject and eliminate extraneous details. Another complication with contemporary way of stitching panoramas is the fact that the final picture composition can be seen only after the processing and assembling individual image segments, it cannot be seen in the camera viewfinder. On the other hand, if you create a long enough panoramic strip, you can inspect it and crop it later to your liking. The traditional “rule of thirds” is not that applicable in panoramic photography, you really want to fill the frame with interesting content. Sometimes, it means having a mountain range across the full width of the frame, and at other times placing a mountain peak or a lake right in the middle. You just create your own rules.
Other considerations
In a two-page spread, you’ll have to be aware of the dividing line between the pages. If you have a group of people in the middle of the photograph, you don’t want to hide somebody’s face between two pages. Similarily, if you placed a main subject in the left third of the image, and the right half is relatively empty, this may look great on an advertising banner, but the content-deprived right page wouldn’t look very appealing in a book. As mentioned above, I wouldn’t recommend to have all images in the same layout – i.e. all double spreads, or two pano images on each page. This would look more like a product catalogue than a book.
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