My Biggest Published Photo

It was more than a year ago that I got an email request from Millenium House publishers in Australia asking about license to use one of my Gigapan images for what sounded like an interesting project- they have published the world’s largest atlas of the world. Earth Platinum is a printed atlas that is 6 feet high!

Apparently Earth Platinum made it in the Guinness Book of World Records

The record-setting Earth Platinum atlas, one of only 31 copies in existence, measures 1.854m x 1.45m with a depth of 6cm and required six members of Library staff to carry its 200kg weight through the doors.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/7/worlds-largest-atlas-is-unveiled-at-the-british-library-43465

The Big Book

The big book is currently on display at the British Library. If go there and ask for assistance (apparently it takes special training to flip the pages!), go to the section on Plate Tectonics on pages 24-25, my image fills the lower frame of these pages. By my math that panorama is 9 1/3 feet wide!

That is quite a thrill. A big photo thrill.

Later Gordon shared a photo of the books being bound in Hong Kong:

An article from Big Think’s column in Strange Maps “The World’s Largest Atlas” indicates each book cost (at the time) $100k.

Big book.

I did get an official invitation to the opening in Abu Dhabi but alas I could not fit into my schedule

That’s a big invite.

There was mention of a documentary, and an old email has a vimeo link for a preview, but alas that is dead too. I did find a video of the book being added to the National Library of New Zealand.

For what it’s worth the original image of Thingvellir in Iceland they found is in the zoom and pan format of Gigapan at http://gigapan.com/gigapans/13062. I was a bit surprised when they asked, because this image has all that ugly banding around the sun. That was because it was so cold that day I forgot to set the exposure hold lock on my little camera.

It looks the publishers cleaned it up nicely!

The Making of the Gigapan Image

This image (it weighs in at 0.51 Gigapixels) was taken on the last day of my November 2008 house sitting stay to Iceland. I took a road trip to see this area of active geology, essentially an on land version of the rift valley where new oceanic plate is being formed along the seam of the Mid-Atlantic Rift. Here is a photo of my Gigapan in action taking the scene above.

The other thing worth knowing about this place is that it was a gathering spot in the year 930 (no typo) where the Icelandic Parliament was formed. They have some old democracy there.

The irony of this story was that the only other people here were three American tourists. I was surprised when one of them asked me, “Is that a Gigapan?” — not had one person recognized the rig in the year or two I took it on the road (also in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Australia)– but this guy was actually affiliated with the Carnegie Mellon University research group that developed the software.

I am rather stoked to see my photo in the big atlas! Now I just need to build a big bookshelf (just kidding, I do not get a copy). But excited that my humble panorama made it in that big book.

The full month is captured also as a flickr album of 485 photos and wee stories in captions.

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Featured Image: Photo shared via email from Gordon Cheers showing pages 24-25 of Earth Platinum where my panorama is displayed across the bottom of both pages.