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Greg Gorfkle

Ecola Wave, 1989

carbon pigment ink print on cotton rag paper

image 43 x 9


I've been asked by clients over the years to create panoramas like they've seen in my work. Often I discovered what they sought was not the 360-degree photograph they had seen in my portfolios. What they saw in my work and held in their minds was quite different.

One reason the distinction is blurred can be traced to the word panorama. A number of cameras labeled by manufacturers as panorama are readily available today. Some are designed merely with fixed wide-angle lenses and some hold a wide piece of film on one end and on the other a lens with the optics to cover it. Other camera designs have lenses that move in a partial arcto expose stationary film and still others rotate in a circle as film constantly moves inside.

Equally as confusing is how the word panorama is used to describe any number of pictures; from ones cropped on their top or bottom and physically long photographs to pictures that appear to have captured a depth extending into infinity and those that seem to have captured infinity from side to side.

In fact, any photograph with one dimension significantly larger than another or that presents a wide field of view is usually called panoramic or a panorama. However, here it is significant to begin by defining what exactly panorama means.

Greg Gorfkle web site