The Largest Photograph in the World on View Sept 6-29

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The Great Picture

The world’s largest photo – 107 x 31ft – will be exhibited from September 6 to 29, 2007 with a premier showing at the Art Center College of Design, South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California.

“The Great Picture” – as it’s aptly titled – was made with the oldest photographic techniques available: a pinhole camera and “film.”

The “pinhole camera” was a converted jet aircraft hangar using 24,000 square feet of six mil black viscuine; 1,300 gallons foam gap filler; 1.52 miles of two-inch wide black gorilla tape; and 40 cans of black spray paint to darken the box. The aperture size was a one-quarter-inch (6mm) pinhole 15 feet above ground, with no lenses.

What served as film was a 1200-pound seamless and unbleached muslin specially ordered from Germany and 80 liters of Rockland Liquid Light – a gelatin silver black and white sensitizer hand-painted onto the fabric under safelight illumination.

The humungous photograph was developed in 600 gallons of traditional black-and-white developer and 1,200 gallons fixer delivered by ten high-volume submersible pumps onto a custom Olympic pool-sized developing tray.

The finished photo measured 107 feet and 5 inches by 31 feet and 5 inches (32.6 x 9.6 meters) or 3,375 square feet in area. That’s about three stories high by eleven stories wide.

[Via: ImagingInsider.com]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.