Photo: Panoramic Street view of the Rochester School for the Deaf Campus

The Perkins Building (Administration), ©2008 DPG

This Victorian building, built in 1870, originally housed the Home for Truant and Idle Children, a reform school. In 1877 it closed and the Rochester School for the Deaf (then named the Western New York Institute for Deaf Mutes) took over the lease, later to buy the property. Over the years it housed the school, its pupils, and its staff at different times while additional buildings went up on campus. The school grew in reputation both for excellence in education and for the warm atmosphere fostered by its staff. Today its alumni still have fond memories of this building and love to tell stories about it, including one about the founder's ghost that supposedly inhabits it to this day.

This photo was made from eight or more smaller photos using a Sony DSC-f717camera mounted on a tripod. I stood on the sidewalk across the street and moved the camera after each shot, ten feet at a time to the side. The photos were assembled in Photoshop and most parallax distortions were corrected. The lighting changed during the shoot, so this had to be adjusted too.

Then, just for the heck of it, I tested the capability of an Epson 7600 printer and printed a 24" by 6 foot long  picture. I was amazed, even after working many hours on its composition. Each brick and almost every leaf and fence post came out sharp, which is difficult to achieve in a single photograph. For a first-time effort, this turned out surprisingly well, but I learned some lessons in parallax and photo compositing that will be of benefit next time.