George Peabody Library – Matthew Petroff

Peering Down

Matthew Petroff — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 06:00:10 +0000

Two years ago, I took a large set of photos at the George Peabody Library. Among those were a very wide angle image looking up at the skylight and an image looking down. The latter was taken with a point-and-shoot camera suspended between the sixth floor railings with the help of fishing line and office supplies. Unfortunately, the field of view was much too narrow, leaving the stacks out completely, so the photo fell short of my vision for it, and it didn’t complement the photo looking up. I needed to use my DSLR and fisheye lens, but there was no way the previous method would have supported it. However, I just revisited this idea and finally got the photo I wanted.

This time, I designed an aluminum rig to hold the DSLR and suspended it between the railings using parachute cord. After stringing the cord across the atrium and pulling it taut with a trucker’s hitch, I attached the camera and pulled the rig to the center of the atrium using fishing line. Once the camera stopped swinging, I took around a dozen exposure-bracketed sets of photos via USB tethering and then took everything down. Finally, I used Hugin to correct the lens distortion and small misalignments for three bracketed sets, masking out people who were moving in each set; Enblend and Enfuse were used to create the final image, which was then cropped.

Pannellum 2.0

Matthew Petroff — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 02:17:42 +0000

Two years in the making, I finally released Pannellum 2.0, which is a near complete rewrite. The renderer was replaced with raw WebGL, and multiresolution panorama support was added, along with a fallback CSS 3D renderer. Other additions include support for JSON configuration files, hotspots, tours, compass headings, CORS, partial panoramas, and cubic panoramas. I also put together a website for the viewer, registering pannellum.org. Unfortunately, there is still a dearth of documentation—something I need to work on. The below example demonstrates the multiresolution, hotspot, compass heading, and tour functionality using panoramas of the George Peabody Library and a JSON configuration file.

George Peabody Library

Matthew Petroff — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:29:01 +0000

During intersession, I took a class at the George Peabody Library that afforded me the opportunity to extensively photograph the gorgeous building. Designed by architect Edmund Lind and completed in 1878, the building is considered one of the most stunning libraries in North America. It houses part of the special collections of Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries. Here are a selection of those photos.

Here is the complete set on Flickr.
Also, here is a panorama of the building.

Quadcopter in the George Peabody Library

Matthew Petroff — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:18:29 +0000

During intersession, I’m taking a class at the George Peabody Library. The librarians were nice enough to let me fly my quadcopter in the library.