A Vancouver photographer is documenting the fan experience of the Canucks' Stanley Cup run using a unique technology that lets viewers see both the big picture and the smallest details.
Ronnie Miranda is using the robot-like GigaPan camera attachment to create giant panoramic photographs of the downtown Vancouver fan zones that allow users to zoom in and find small details with the click of a mouse.
"If you zoom in you see people doing things at different times. If you pan around the image there's another story going on. So it is about telling a story, both as a big picture and also in smaller elements in the image," Miranda told CTV News.
Take a look around his gigapixel photo of the Georgia Street fan zone before the start of Game 5, and you'll see one lonely Boston fan standing out amidst a sea of Canucks blue. Pan a little further down, and you'll find a group of Vancouver boosters tossing around a beach ball to pass the time.
With the GigaPan attached, Miranda is able to take hundreds of images over a period of 10 or 15 minutes. The pictures are then stitched together in a virtual grid of eight rows by 32 columns.
The technology was developed for NASA to use on its Mars Rovers to capture images of the planet's surface. But the software needed to stitch the shots together was developed by a computer scientist at the University of B.C.
Miranda's next goal is to find the perfect vantage point inside Rogers Arena to capture fans' excitement during Game 6 on Monday.
"It's a very historical event. I wanted to capture a photo that will mark that event and it's going to remain there for the rest of our lives," he said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger
