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Children’s Museum cityscape
June 15, 2008
Earlier this year I wrote about
tone-mapping of photos, and partly as a result of that story, I started work on a project for the local Children’s Museum to make some really large photo murals. The original museum was demolished about five years ago to make way for a new three-story version with new displays and more creative play areas. My job was to create large wall graphics for the new building, and I took the challenge.
Overcast skies make nice tone-mapped photos, so I started riding my bicycle around town on cloudy days, collecting photos of historic buildings. Then I made High Dynamic Range images of the buildings to move into Photomatix Pro for the tone-mapping process.
The San Luis Obispo Children's Museum cityscape is a composite image made from five HDR images tone-mapped with Photomatix Pro. The final file is over 19 feet in length, and it occupies the wall along the grand staircase at the new museum.
I assembled a composite town, made up of four buildings and one of our prominent local mountains. I exaggerated the colors to make it look like a fantasy village.
The photo mural town is on a wall that can be reached by hands as people go up and down the main staircase of the museum, so we decided to print on adhesive-backed vinyl material and then laminate that material with polycarbonate plastic. That way the murals are washable, and can be cleaned even if marked with markers or chewing gum.
Paper-hanger John Cleek works on two of the 12-foot strips of ink-jet output. He made special register marks to ensure that the graphics went up correctly.
Speaking of chewing gum, our city has a famous tourist spot called
Bubblegum Alley. It’s a narrow alley between two commercial buildings on our main street. Over the decades young people have decorated the brick walls of this alley with chewing gum. It’s odd, but it’s strangely charming. In the Children’s Museum we decided to recreate the Bubblegum Alley with large graphics mounted over sheet steel along one wall. Then the musuem contracted with a company to make resin globs of gum with magnets encased within. Children visiting the museum will then be able to decorate the replica Bubblegum Alley with magnetic gum.
These brick walls are made of wide-format ink-jet printing on adhesive-backed vinyl, laminated with polycarbonate. In the (likely) event that some child puts
real bubblegum on the wall, it can be removed easily with mineral spirits. The polycarbonate is impervious to most solvents, soaps and oils.
Preparing the files was an experience in pre-media. My largest graphic ended up as a 4.7GB file. The Photoshop format does not accommodate images greater than 30,000 pixels in either dimension. This one was significantly bigger than that, so had to be saved in a format called Large Graphic File, one I had never used before. The firm which did the ink-jet output had no problem with the file format or the size – this is routine for them.
The files were output in strips 50 inches wide and up to 12 feet in length. Then an expert wallpaper hanger laid them out on the floor, made impromptu register marks, and applied the graphics to the walls. This was interesting to watch. Each strip represented hundreds of dollars of print value. Bubbles and wrinkles were not an option. This fellow worked with a stiff felt pad in one hand and slowly and carefully pulled the release paper from the back of the adhesive-backed vinyl as he worked. The greatest spread – 19 feet – went together flawlessly. It was a testament to his skills and patience.
The graphics are now up; the museum has its grand opening this coming Thursday, and I am mighty proud of the work I did with HDR, tone-mapping, ink-jet printing, and high-tech laminates. The museum looks really great, and I am happy to have lent a hand in getting the work done.
Posted by Brian Lawler on June 15, 2008 | Comments (0)
