National Geographic brings new Infinite Photograph online
As something of a shutterbug I love browsing through photographs. Even more compelling is the concept of photo-mosaics. For those of you who haven’t encountered them, a photo mosaic is generally a picture that is comprised of many smaller pictures. Each of the smaller pictures are chosen by colours to provide appropriate shading and texture to the larger picture when it is viewed from a distance. They are generally pretty cool to look at.
National Geographic implemented their MyShot program a while ago which features user-uploaded photographs that get displayed both online as well as in their monthly magazine.
The Infinite Photograph V1.0 has been created to showcase many of the photographs submitted to the MyShot program in a mosaic of seemingly never-ending depth. The mosaic program was created in-house by one developer in National Geographic’s Content and Design department. Currently consisting of approximately 300,000 photographs the opening photo allows the viewer to click on segments of the picture which resizes the screen to reveal the smaller photos that comprise it’s makeup. A few clicks will quickly make any of the smaller photos fill the viewing window. At this point the process starts over again allowing the viewer to keep clicking and dive deeper and deeper into the collection of photographs.
A few lines hardly does this mosaic justice and I strongly encourage everyone to check this out for themselves. The initial loading of the mosaic application take just over a minute but it moves along quite smoothly after than and is well worth the wait.