Space of the Week: Manamansalo, Finland
As the days get shorter and we head into fall, we look back at what photographer Tapani Rantakokko did on his summer vacation as we feature his space "Manamansalo" as this week’s Space of the Week. We begin with asking him to tell us a bit about this picturesque location.
“Manamansalo is an island at the center of one of the largest lakes in Finland, about two-hour drive from my home at the city of Oulu,” began Rantakokko. “There are miles of sandy beaches and great hiking tracks, plus a popular camping site. During summer holidays I took my family there for a few nights. Late in the evening, after we got our kids to bed in the camper, I grabbed my gear from the trunk and sneaked back to the beach. On these latitudes the sun sets about 10:30 PM in July, so I had just enough time to capture a couple of panoramas. The next night I did the same thing, so actually the photos are from two different nights.’
“They are not perfect panos; even a lightly trained eye can easily spot many mistakes. More so from my older attempts. But as I am not a professional panographer, I feel that I have the privilege of not needing to maintain constant high quality appearance -- sometimes I get a better shot, sometimes not so good, but each one of them brings me back to that place and time. Isn't that the ultimate purpose of amateur photography, bring back some memories?” asked Rantakokko.
Yes, we have to agree with you on that, Tapani. Maybe even for professional photography, no? How did you get your start in panography?
I studied software engineering in a local university and started my career as a research scientist in a large national research centre. That was during the golden years of Finnish mobile phone industry. There I met some talented people and had the honor to work with them on projects in which many of the now standard smartphone features were first developed. For example, we made a mobile phone learn and recognize free-form gestures drawn in the air with the phone already 12 years ago, or five years before the first iPhone was introduced.
In 2006 six of us founded a spin-off company Finwe Ltd. to commercialize some of the technologies we had developed. It was a successful business for many years, but eventually the local mobile phone industry got severely bit by Nokia's decline. We needed to make a hard decision whether to close our office or try to re-build the company. Being stubborn Finns, we didn't want to give up, and started looking for new business areas.
Our key strengths was -- and still is -- an understanding of sensors. We had worked with sensor fusion where accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope sensor data is mathematically combined to get an accurate value of device's attitude and heading. I wanted to apply this information for turning a camera in a 3D scene. So I made a demo where a panoramic 360 photograph from the interior of a BMW could be viewed with a phone or tablet simply by turning around while holding the device in hand.
That demo turned out to be a great success, and a portal for us to the wonderful world of panoramic photography and video, which has now become Finwe's main focus area. It also sparkled a personal interest in me for 360 panoramic photography, as I wanted to be able to create such content myself for testing purposes, and also to understand the challenges, tools and workflow of the professional panographers, who would produce the content to be viewed with our player.
How long have you been doing it?
I made my first attempts to create my own 360 panoramic image just 18 months ago. I tried out various smartphone apps only to find out they were next to useless, so I grabbed my old entry level Canon DSLR and got a little better result with its kit lens and Hugin, an open source GUI for panotools. Then I bought a tripod, a panoramic head and a fisheye lens, and started really learning the secrets of making a decent 360 image. Now I use a full-frame camera and the best available software, but I feel I am still just an amateur with a rather expensive hobby...
While you claim you are not a professional panographer, you still do quite lovely work. What do you like about panography?
At first, I fell in love how challenging it was. That may sound weird, but I am a person who always seems to find the most difficult path to accomplish a task and quickly loses interest when something becomes a routine. Shooting great ordinary photographs had become so easy and commonplace with mass adoption of cheap DSLRs that I didn't find it interesting. But making great 360 photos still provide enough challenge and learning curve to keep me excited about it.
Another treat is going out to the nature with a purpose. I lived my childhood in a small village about 200 miles North from the Arctic Circle. It is a silent but scenic part of the world and provides lots of opportunities for a photographer who is willing to take an extra mile, literally. While I have always enjoyed going to the forest, 360 photography has given me a great excuse for climbing up to the hills and sitting there alone with my camera several hours, watching the sunset or polar lights dancing high in the sky. That provides a great balance for a hectic work in the software industry.
What's your camera set-up?
Most of the time I shoot with Canon 6D and 10mm f/2.8 Sigma fisheye, but for gigapixel panoramas I use Canon 200mm f/2.8L zoom lens. I set them on a tripod with Nodal Ninja panoramic head. I know this is not the lightest setup to carry around, but I actually want to spend some time and effort, remember that I like to keep it challenging?
Please describe your workflow.
I am not experienced enough to remember how to do all the little things correctly on the shooting spot, so I have locked the panoramic head, taped the focus ring of the lens, and set a custom program in the camera. I also try to always repeat the same shooting patterns, such as four shots around at 90-degree intervals and then one down while tilting the camera and the tripod. But I frequently seem to forget something, and still haven't done that one perfect panorama yet... Whenever I feel that I am getting a hang of it, I find myself adding more challenge such as HDR or gigapixel.
In the editing phase I first import raw files to Lightroom and make some initial adjustments, such as fix the orientation and reduce noise and chromatic aberration. Then I export everything to TIFFs and import them to PTGui, where I mask the tripod and stitch maximum resolution OpenEXR HDR file. After some small retouches in Photoshop I tone map the image with Photomatix and export a TIFF. I give it the final touch either in Lightroom or Photoshop -- I prefer Lightroom's interface much more, but I tend to forget which operators make local adjustments and easily expose the seam at the edge of the image.
Do you have any tips for newcomers?
In my opinion, the most important thing that sets 360 photography apart from all other kinds of images is its ability to arouse a sensation of being somewhere else -- especially when viewed via VR glasses. But to be able to freely look around has no utility if there isn't anything interesting to look at! So, number one priority should be to find spaces that are interesting to explore in multiple directions.
This requires a change of mind, as you need to start looking at things and directions nobody usually cares about. Finding a good spot for a 360 is often hard and lonesome work, as an otherwise scenic place might be totally blunt when you turn your head around, and nobody understands why you are not satisfied. Sometimes beautiful light paints otherwise boring things pretty, sometimes it helps to move a little bit closer to reveal more detail.
You discovered Roundme through a public conversation on Facebook. How do you feel about it now that you’ve been using it?
When I started making 360s I exported them to my personal website using KRPano and similar tools. It works great, but this approach has two major drawbacks: there is no traffic unless I spend considerable effort and/or money, and I also have one more thing to maintain myself. Facebook seemed to be quite unfriendly platform for publishing panoramas. I also tried Google Views but considered it isn't worth the effort.
So I wanted something simple that just works, a place where I can upload 360s and share links to. Roundme turned out to be just that. Especially, I like how easy it is to link panoramas together with a Portal. I think I have created too many of them already….
What I'd still like to see added to Roundme is support for soundtracks and map integration, so I can share where exactly the pano was shot, and everyone can listen to the silence of the wilderness of Northern Lapland (pun intended).
Thanks for the feedback, Tapani. The Roundme Team really loves to hear feedback from the community. The features you requested including some new ones should be rolling out by November if everything goes well. Be sure to subscribe to our blog for the latest updates!
To see more of Tapani Rantakokko’s photography and to virtually visit beautiful locations in Finland, click here.