Sauropod gut check

In the past I have posted a few times on unusual perspectives of our MfN dinosaurs, especially the big sauropods Giraffatitan (ex Brachiosaurus), Diplodocus and Dicraeosaurus. There’s one view that I didn’t write much about before, and I won’t write much today – but I’ll show you a few pictures. Gut check pics. Can you tell which is which?

These photographs were all taken with a Canon EF 8-15 mm Fisheye lens set to 15 mm. Obviously a fisheye, but there’s way more this lens allows! Below, a few more “gut check” and other views of the dinosaur hall I took today.

If you look closely, you can see the low railing that runs around the low platform under the dinosaurs. The lens allows depicting almost a hemisphere! My colleague Matteo Belvedere, who helped me with the pic taking, and I had to hide ourselves well so we wouldn’t be in the photos! In fact, I used the 10 second timer release on the shutter and laid myself flat on the ground next to the platform – which gave Matteo a good laugh 😉

By now, I suspect every last reader of this blog has found out what wonderful image these photographs remind us of. Julius Csontonyi’s wonderful fisheye view of a sauropod. One of the coolest bits I’ve seen in a loooong time. Here‘s one version on the web. Isn’t it great? My images were taken from under the animals, not just next to them, but the oddness of ther perspective is similar.

Now, to round this off, for two shots of the hall from a more conventional viewpoint.

The latter shows off the huge size of Giraffatitan very well, as well as the hall’s overall classical proportions and architecture. And the great skylight. I makes for great lighting, but I must admit that it can be a challenge to photograph something big, as one invariably ends up photographing it against the light. In this case, shooting a series of different exposures and HDR-merging them helped 😉

 

 

 

 

 

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