Ever wondered how cool could it be to photograph different planets from close by and show how each one of them is different and unique? Well, unless you're an astronaut or a robot named 'Curiosity', you'll have to wait with that dream. But until then, why not making your own planets, all based on planet earth? Check out these awesome examples of mini-worlds (or "mini-planets", "Stereographic panoramas") found on Flickr.
Making these mini real-life globes is fairly easy. All you need to do is shoot a 360° panorama, resize it into a square shape, and use the 'Polar Coordinates' filter in Photoshop. To see a tutorial on how to do it, click here.
Want to share your own results with us? do so in the comments below or on our Facebook Group.
Photo: Simon The Fox.
Photo: Mike Innes.
Photo: Tom.
Photo: Andrew Sweeney.
Photo: Wu Peng.
Photo: Josh Sommers.
Photo: AlpixImages.
Photo: Jim Sher.
Photo: Constantinos Hinis.
Photo: AlpixImages.
Photo: Thomas Reimann.
Photo: Mike Goldberg.
Photo: Erik Aldrich.
Photo: Kevin Wong.
Photo: George Barker.
Photo: Jerome Mungapen.
Photo: Gonzalo Iza.
Photo: Manu.
As someone who knows how to properly create one of these (from a tec standpoint) without the stupid PC squeeze from PS, I'm very unimpressed by half of this stuff.
The adorama video linked in the article gives a super bad tutorial using the wrong equipment. Unimpressed.
If anyone wants to learn how to make one of these without the "PC squeeze" as flood drip says hit me up on facebook.
I do these and all you need is a camera, a tripod, tons of photos taken a very specific way and lots of photoshopping them all together. some of these samples look good, but many look really bad. Not very impressed.
After doing a 365 (one-photo-per-day) project, I was looking for something new and decided to do one of these 'planets' every week for a year (so a 52-project). I did cheat and use the PC Squeeze method a few times, but the majority of the work was done with "hugin" - an awesome free software that stitches the photos together. Some clean-up in PS is necessary:
https://picasaweb.google.com/101199616856267243742/52?authuser=0&fea...
quick follow up:
This is my favorite out of the series: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/BXIUGgkRjrDeesjUJKpsq9MTjNZETYmyPJ...
And the tutorial I used is here:
http://ultrawide.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/how-to-create-a-little-planet-...
In the tutorial, they use seven (HDR) shots... I typically had way more than that... in the range of 40-50 shots.
Great work man!! thanks for the info!
Thank you! I just saw a comment from Esphera - who had much better shots than mine (it seems to have disappeared) ... He was using the correct equipment - nodal ninja nad fisheye lens. I mostly used my sigma 10mm-20mm (@20mm) with a simple tripod - some of the planets in my collection were shot with my iPhone (when I didn't have my D90 with me). My PS skills are lacking, so there are some errors here and there in my images.
Nonetheless, it was a fun project - somewhat demanding at times since finding a decent spot to do these panoplanets is tough and shooting and processing can take anywhere from two to six hours.
Awesome work! Thanks for the link to Hugin tutorial :D
Hugin is one of those great free open-source treasures most people aren't aware of.
Here, add mine to the list :D
I tried this with photoshop. It's not easy to do it manually. Here's my first try. https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/374008_4...
These look great! This is an interesting twist using this technique by a photographer in Paris called Alexander JE Bradley.
http://www.alexanderjebradley.com/miniplanet.html
These are fun when done correctly, I wouldnt say im unimpressed by whats presented here. But its certainly not a new topic to photography. If someone wants to tip me on how to get balanced color in the sand of my pic here please fill me in.
This is some awesome stuff!!
Some very cool pics!
the tree picture by josh is amazing!
thanks for sharing, noam. i'm a big fan of tiny planets. here's a few of my own.
I love these! So much so I went straight out and shot one by hand. Post took me about 20min.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexanderroe/9295234444/
Here's 2 of mine:
http://flic.kr/p/eHfe9z
and
http://flic.kr/p/doGp3i