How big is the print? How much can you zoom into the image? Can you spot my friend Austin?

I’ve been visiting Columbus Ohio for many years now. My good friend and fellow photographer Austin of Collection 23 Photography is a true Ohioan. Born, bred, attended Ohio State, lives and works there. I can understand why. It’s a great place for enterprise, and family life, and opportunities to embrace the outdoors are abundant.

The image began as part of a photo article I was writing that unfortunately never got published. But with such amazing access, I couldn’t resist getting the shot that I really wanted.

I had been granted full field access for the article, but the shot I wanted was a stadium panorama showing the enormity of the structure and how so many people interact with it.

If you don’t know, this is the Ohio State University football stadium in Columbus Ohio. If you’re reading this outside of the USA, I’ll give you some context about the stadium capacity.  In the UK, Old Trafford, the Manchester United football, stadium holds just over 75’000 people. Wembley Stadium holds 90’000.

The Ohio State University stadium holds 102’780… and it’s only the third largest University stadium in the country… and it sells out almost every home game.  12’000 more people than Wembley, about the stadium capacity of Southend United.

My friend Austin was working as my 2nd camera, so while he stayed on the sidelines getting the action shots, I started the slow and high climb to almost the top of the stands. I didn’t just want a shot of the stadium with the game in motion, there’s an awful lot that goes on before an American Football game. Many traditions and many honours to recognise and I wanted to capture as much of that as possible.

Now, my camera of choice is the Fujifilm GFX100s. A medium format digital camera with a 100mp sensor. It produces huge images straight from the sensor, almost 1m without enlarging software. I wanted bigger. My plan was to create a stitched panorama to capture everything I wanted that would show the enormity and the grandeur of the college football experience.

After a few practice shots, I settled on an 8 frame capture. Some might say a little excessive. After working on stitching and blending them all together, I started to agree. But after an initial 8-hour edit, I was glad to put in the effort.

But why did it take so long? Surely with today’s incredible software, stitching a panoramic photo together is a simple click of a button. A lot of the time it is, but with over 100’000 people constantly moving, it was like trying to stitch the sea together. But I did it. After stitching together, it was a case of small corrections, colours etc. then it was done.

The final layered document size was just over 5GB. Which would in theory print out at 217cm x 111cm before any enlargements. If you want to see what that means in zooming capability, my friend Austin is in the image where the big yellow arrow is pointing. And this is zoomed in to him at 400%

Am I 100% happy with the final image? Probably not. I know there are minor imperfections you’d have to hunt really hard to find, but I know they’re there. If I were to do something this large scale again, I’d probably use a shift lens and do a 3-frame stitch. The GFX100s sensor is so good, all the detail you’d ever need would still be captured.

Bonus tip. If you fancy trying something similar, I’d suggest making the frame captures during the National Anthem. You’re almost guaranteed most people within your frames will be fairly static, making the panorama creation a lot easier.