The photos in this website were taken in Australia in 1987-88 during a job exchange and in late 1989 during a return visit. The Arizona Department of Transportation and the New South Wales Department of Planning sponsored the job exchange.
With an Olympus-10 camera. I would stand in one position with a steady hand and eye, and slowly rotate taking pictures. After a roll of photos were developed, I manually stitched the pictures together.
In 2014, I began to create a digital record of the collection. I scanned the negatives of the panoramic photos and used the computer to stitch the images. I then used color correction on the computer to match the digital images to the original prints. I also scanned the original prints of 10 panoramic prints (their negatives were missing) and used the computer to remove the seams. One digital panoramic from the collection is a hybird of negatives and panoramic prints.
My wide-angle panoramic prints of Australia were uncommon for its time. I found most people did not take panoramics, possibly because of the cost of film, the cost of developing, the patience to take sequential photos, and the effort to stitch them together.
The digital conversion of the original panoramics make them look like they were taken recently. The people, cars, and skylines, however, reveal a different time period.
- Jim Rindone
