Panoramic Bookshelf: Panorama as Medium

This category of books chooses panorama photography in its most genuine meaning, showing a wide vista (wide angle view, see Wikipedia) that would not fit into a regular image aspect ratio. These books transport the views that you have at elevated viewing point into a book and make the reader experience the view from his arm chair.

Here I have 2 books from this category, both covering the Alps and published in the 1980's.

Swiss Panorama - Emil Schulthess

This book was published first time in 1982 (32 years ago!) and offers a wide range of panoramic views across Switzerland. Most of the images were created in the late 1970's with a huge technical effort. The photographer had to deal with panorama film cameras, helicopters and tailor-made rigs. He gives a summary of the project in the book and I have to pay greatest respect to this achievement to start this project from the scratch with a genius and scientific approach, many years before digital photography was available and people armed with a mobile phone stumbling on mountain peaks shooting panoramas and uploading them 10 seconds later into some image website. 

The book comes high resolution images and great level of details and info about the surrounding area and important points of interest in every image.

Of course this book is out of print but you still get used copies on the usual platforms.

Emil Schulthess lived from 1913 to 1996, his work was given to the Fotostiftung Schweiz, all images below (the images in the book are copyrighted by them)  shall only highlight the book and and entice you to buy your own copy.

Swiss Panorama by Emil Schulthess (1982)

Actual Panorama across 3 pages

Panoramic Bookshelf: Non-Panoramic Panorama Books

While hunting for panoramic books I bought books just by the title. As long it was named "... Panorama ... something" and I could not find any further info about it in the web I would buy it (provided the price is reasonable) hoping for luck. Most of these non-panoramic titles are related to travel, like books about certain places or regions. The word panorama is a bit misleading, seems some publisher or authors want to highlight the broad scope of the book, or it is showing a lot of pictures from many places or something similar.

Here a selection of my non-panoramic panorama books. You won't find a single panorama image in all of these books.

Berlin-Panorama (deutsche Ausgabe) Farbbildband durch die Hauptstadt
Dresden Panorama (deutsche Ausgabe) Farbbildband durch das Elbflorenz 
Rather average picture books, the author published books of many cities and areas in Germany.A bit like must-have-seen in Berlin booklet, to me a random collection of tourist highlights with little detail (text).

Berlin and Dresden Panorama

Naturpanorama Norwegen (Panoramic books) 
Another coffeetable book about Norway from the 1990's. Publisher Ziethen-Panorama (they got panorama even in their name). Nice images but no panoramic views though.

Naturpanorama Norwegen

Ägypten Panorama 
Same as the Norway book, same publisher, same style.

Ägypten Panorama

Berliner Panorama 

This is quite an interesting book because it was published in the former GDR (DDR), in east Germany. Without any independent publishing available even this book had to be in line with the east German ideology and policies. You get the book for less than 10 cents but it comes with bw images from a long passed history. You might notice there are no images of the wall (which was still there in pre-1989).

Panoramic Bookshelf: How-to and History Books

This type of books either gives an overview of panoramic photography or guides you through the process of picking up panorama photography.

Here a few books, some of them I own:


Stretch: The Art of Panoramic Photography
by Nick Meers (2003, english)

One of the first panoramic books I ever bought. A very nice collection of panoramic images of different times and an overview of available technologies (at the time of 2003). The book shows pictures of various photographers.

Panoramic Photography
by Lee Frost (2005, english)

A comprehensive walk-through panoramic imaging with mostly film based technology. Here the author solely uses own images.

Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook
by William Rodarmor (2005, english)

A typical how-to book for digitial panoramas solely. Given current tools, already outdated, though the basci concepts still apply.











A few more titles with similar background:

Panoramic Bookshelf

Selection of panoramic Books

I love panorama photography, though it became much more popular and mainstream the last few years because of easy access to the masses. While last time only special cameras could do panoramic shots, today any mobile phone can do it, most of the times with questionable quality but sometimes with decent results.

The greatest achievement for a panoramic image is to be presented as print at the wall, either framed or mounted as dibond print. Another fantastic representation is in book form, usually as coffee-table style books. Over the years I collected some 30 or more panoramic books, and recently I started hunting for panoramic books on the various used-books portals where you can get books at a few Euros which originally cost 10 times more when purchased new. Not quite easy task, as sometime the word panorama as keyword alone does not result in books with panoramic images, but without further hints on sometimes years old books it is a bit like lucky draw.

I will discuss the book categories and the individual titles in upcoming blogs. So stay tuned.

Panobook 2009

The coffetable book published by Kolor is a yearbook with digital (stitched) images from the AutoPano Pro user community. The book was released earlier this year (they are already working on the 2010 book), 365 images by 221 users from all over the world give enough interesting to browse for quite a while. A nice addition (for 27 Euro, free shipping) to my panorama library. You can order it from Kolor only (www.kolor.com).