31. Horizontal Panoramas from the GO Train
Street Photography
When we extend our visual capabilities with a camera, we pick up a technology more powerful and potentially hazardous than we realise. With little thought or regard for what we are doing, we stop looking and start shooting. But we don’t shoot to kill, we shoot to capture. We don’t make an image, we take a picture. And we can take whatever we want. Everything the light touches is ours.
Dorothea Lange claimed that, because it reveals the interests and predilections of the photographer, every photograph is a self-portrait of the photographer. But it’s not just the subject and style of a photograph that reveals the identity of the author, it’s also the technology built into the camera.
Cameras are designed to record the world according to the rules of linear perspective. All lines in the image converge on one or more points on, above, or below a horizon line that is level with the eye behind the camera. Whatever else it shows, a photograph reveals the presence and position of the photographer. Smartphones also record precise GPS coordinates and a time stamp revealing the position of the photographer and the exact time when the image was taken.
By sharing our photos online, often immediately after taking them, we reveal who we are, where we are, and what we are doing — and it’s all connected to our profile, which links to other sites containing more personal content. In our effort to document and share experiences from our daily lives, we are, in fact, shooting ourselves in the foot.
However, we persist with our project of capturing and sharing everything that is ours, including ourselves. And if it’s difficult to communicate the complexity of an experience with just one image, we have other options. We can quickly swipe from photo mode to video or panorama.
A panorama enables us to increase our take by extending the field of view beyond a single frame. Push a button and the camera becomes a combine harvester — threshing, separating, and cleaning up a swathe of landscape as fast as it can be scanned. With one sweeping gesture, we can take it all in. In the process, we are taken in by the machine. We end up at the centre of a diorama, and our presence there is visible to everyone but us.
If we want to limit the subjectivity and visibility of the photographer, we can use a different (actual or metaphorical) lens. And if our objective is to change the embedded relationships between the photographer, the photograph, and the viewer, we don’t have to throw a monkey wrench into the photographic process; we can just mess with the machine.
To make a horizontal panorama, we change one of the rules. Instead of standing still, we move. Rather than pivoting the camera around our stationary body, we place the machine in another machine that moves parallel to the scene we want to record. We choose where to place the camera and when to press the button. The machine does the rest.
I like capturing horizontal panoramas when I visit Toronto, as I did recently. I can take them from subway trains, surface trains, and streetcars. Because they travel on rails, they move smoothly. Because Toronto is a busy, crowded city, they move slowly. And because it’s pretty flat, their movements are reliably horizontal.
I made the three panoramas below by holding my iPhone flat against the window of a GO Transit train, pressing the record button as it moved. As soon as one panorama was taken, I pressed the button again. I paid more attention to keeping the phone level than I did to what was being recorded.
The result is an image with a strange, flattened perspective. The cameraphone’s processor works hard to capture everything equally and accurately. It doesn’t look for a dominant subject and it tries to keep everything in focus. The image lacks the subjectivity of a personal statement. It’s more like a mechanical drawing or map — measured and dispassionate. It’s a brass rubbing of the world.
Technical Notes
I normally upload images sampled down to 2,000 pixels wide, so they load quickly. The photos below have been sampled down to 5,000 pixels in order to preserve more of the detail (the original for the first image is a 38.9 MB jpeg file, 16,382 pixels wide). The photos were shot using an iPhone 11 Pro and the wide, ƒ/1.8 aperture camera.
What’s next?
As I mentioned in the previous post, I recently returned to Dunedin, New Zealand from a six-week visit to Canada with my family. I took quite a few panoramas with my iPhone in and around Toronto. While waiting for our return flight at Pearson International Airport, I shot a few panoramas from the moving sidewalks that are there to assist passengers in the long walk to the departure gates. The images differ from the ones shown above because the background was closer and the shots included people walking by. I plan to show and discuss the results in the next post, which you can receive by email by subscribing below.
What do you think?
Feel free to leave a comment below.
Agreed. Many excellent ideas here to digest. The resulting photos are indeed flat (a bit like a still from a grittier version of a Wes Anderson film). In the middle image, I'm struck by how the concrete and other detritus stands out--owing to its proximity to the train/lens but also in terms of the random bits of color.
I like these. Interesting composition and nice limited colour palettes.