Giro d'Shopping!
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is one of the world's oldest shopping malls. Housed within a four-story double arcade in central Milan, the Galleria is named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of the Kingdom of Italy, who also laid the first stone on March 7th 1865. It was designed in 1861 and built by architect Giuseppe Mengoni between 1865 and 1877.
For sheer belle époque splendour, this extravagant 19th-century glass-topped, barrel-vaulted tunnel serves as a lively, noisy and most of all colourful shopping mall, swarming with life and inviting you to people-watching from the tables that spill from the Galleria's many bars and restaurants. Therefore, the Galleria is often nicknamed 'il salotto di Milano' (Milan's drawing room), due to its numerous shops and importance as a common Milanese meeting and dining place.
Nice fact: in 2012, the McDonald's restaurant in the Galleria was prevented from renewing its tenancy after 20 years of occupancy. McDonald's sued the landlord - the municipality of Milano - for €24 million in damages, alleging that the loss of the lease will deprive McDonald's of €6 million per year in sales. During its last few hours of operation, the restaurant offered free food and drinks to over 5000 customers as a kind of protest. This tactic partly worked. The McDonald's restaurant was replaced with the gallery's second Prada store. But McDonald's renounced its suit against the municipality after receiving the opportunity to open a new restaurant in building next to the Galleria.
Finally, you may wonder why Carabinieri are checking peoples bags (on the right). That’s not to check if you bought enough stuff at Prada, but this was due to the finishing of the Giro d'Italia 2017 at the Piazza Del Duomo; which is situated next to the Galleria.
Technical stuff
This panorama consists of 27 individual handheld photos, take in three horizontal rows. The photo have approximately a 45% horizontal and 60% vertical overlap to compensate for all the curvatures in the construction of The Galleria; especially its roof.
All photos were made with a Fujifilm X-T2 with a Fujifilm XF10-24mmF4 R OIS mounted. The focal length I used was 15.0 mm (although the EXIF data says different). Using 10.0 mm normally leads to too much distortion, and therefore you have to take lots more photo to compensate for this wide angle effect.
For the initial merge I used PS CC. I find that this panorama algorithm or “pano engine” is the best to work with in my workflow. After stitching I used Photoshop’ warp tool to stretch and address the remaining geometric distortions.
Post-production included colour toning, balancing the overall lighting, highlighting some aspects, enhancing the contrast using a High Pass filter (set at 10,0) and I finally add the copyright watermark. The latter is, alas, there to stay due to the frequent copying of my photos. So, don't bother commenting on that.
The final image is 1,4 GB large and is the size of wall paper. So, I resized it for Flickr to a mere 3000 pixels. Which is a actually not more than a postage stamp compared to the original image.
Giro d'Shopping!
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is one of the world's oldest shopping malls. Housed within a four-story double arcade in central Milan, the Galleria is named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of the Kingdom of Italy, who also laid the first stone on March 7th 1865. It was designed in 1861 and built by architect Giuseppe Mengoni between 1865 and 1877.
For sheer belle époque splendour, this extravagant 19th-century glass-topped, barrel-vaulted tunnel serves as a lively, noisy and most of all colourful shopping mall, swarming with life and inviting you to people-watching from the tables that spill from the Galleria's many bars and restaurants. Therefore, the Galleria is often nicknamed 'il salotto di Milano' (Milan's drawing room), due to its numerous shops and importance as a common Milanese meeting and dining place.
Nice fact: in 2012, the McDonald's restaurant in the Galleria was prevented from renewing its tenancy after 20 years of occupancy. McDonald's sued the landlord - the municipality of Milano - for €24 million in damages, alleging that the loss of the lease will deprive McDonald's of €6 million per year in sales. During its last few hours of operation, the restaurant offered free food and drinks to over 5000 customers as a kind of protest. This tactic partly worked. The McDonald's restaurant was replaced with the gallery's second Prada store. But McDonald's renounced its suit against the municipality after receiving the opportunity to open a new restaurant in building next to the Galleria.
Finally, you may wonder why Carabinieri are checking peoples bags (on the right). That’s not to check if you bought enough stuff at Prada, but this was due to the finishing of the Giro d'Italia 2017 at the Piazza Del Duomo; which is situated next to the Galleria.
Technical stuff
This panorama consists of 27 individual handheld photos, take in three horizontal rows. The photo have approximately a 45% horizontal and 60% vertical overlap to compensate for all the curvatures in the construction of The Galleria; especially its roof.
All photos were made with a Fujifilm X-T2 with a Fujifilm XF10-24mmF4 R OIS mounted. The focal length I used was 15.0 mm (although the EXIF data says different). Using 10.0 mm normally leads to too much distortion, and therefore you have to take lots more photo to compensate for this wide angle effect.
For the initial merge I used PS CC. I find that this panorama algorithm or “pano engine” is the best to work with in my workflow. After stitching I used Photoshop’ warp tool to stretch and address the remaining geometric distortions.
Post-production included colour toning, balancing the overall lighting, highlighting some aspects, enhancing the contrast using a High Pass filter (set at 10,0) and I finally add the copyright watermark. The latter is, alas, there to stay due to the frequent copying of my photos. So, don't bother commenting on that.
The final image is 1,4 GB large and is the size of wall paper. So, I resized it for Flickr to a mere 3000 pixels. Which is a actually not more than a postage stamp compared to the original image.