Photographing Arkona Silo Art

About Arkona Silo Art

This is another Silo Art painting by Smug (aka Simon Bates). It is some 11km north of Dimboola on the Dimboola - Rainbow Rd. The painting depicts a local identity Roley Klinge, who had passed away some 11 years prior to painting.

Viewpoints

The silo art is on private property, but just alongside a small dirt road off the main C227 road. There are many views up and down the C227, and on or beside the dirt road.

The key options for photographing this are: to use a wide angle, and to get back over the C227 road as much as possible; stitch some normal photos and correct the distortion; use a tilt-shift lens; or use a drone to get up about 10m above the road. I opted to use the drone.

How I photographed the Arkona Silo Art

What I took - what was in my kit

I took my LowePro Backpack loaded with Canon 5DSR body, Canon 24-70mm, Manfrotto 190 Tripod, and of course a range of lens wipes, spare batteries, sunscreen and bug repellant. I also took a DJI Mavic Air 2 drone. The photo above is from the DJI drone.

Techniques

Photo stitching.

As with many wide scenes (panoramas), you have a choice of a specialised panoramic camera like the Linhof, severely cropping a single image, or stitching several images together. I used multiple Canon 5SDR images stitched together.

Tilt-Shift (lens or bodies)

The original belows cameras of the early 1900's had massive film plates (e.g 8x10 inches, or 4x5 inches) and they required all careful focussing. Unfortunately, most scenes do not allow a normal camera to have more things in focus than something that is pararell to the plane of the film (or sensor). The early cameras solved this by having 'movements' - where the plane of the lens could be something other than parrallel to the plane of the film (sensor). This allows a lot of problems to be solved. "Tilting" buildings could be straightened out in camera, and things that were at different distances to the camera could both be made to be in focus. A tilt-shift lens performs similar optical tricks to these movements on a normal camera. i.e. 1) you can correct the 'tilt' of silo back to vertical, and 2) you can appear to 'shift' yourself from where you actually are. E.g. up in the air for a silo, or out in a stream for photographing a river. The terms tilt and shift refer to the actual lens movements and not the perspective, but you can use these terms to think of the change in perspective too.

Drone photography

Drone cameras, at least on those drones that do not cost a fortune, are not that good. Like small format cameras, they suffer from having a small image chip. They do wonders in terms of electronics to try and improve the quality of the image, but they are still not up to a good camera. The key advantage of a drone though is that it can get perspective that is impossible from a land based camera without a crane or hoist of some sorts. You can basically shoot a shot from 50m above your head, or 200m over the right, above a river or something.

Other things to look out for

If you are coming to Dimboola, then you should also look at: Horsham Silo Art, the Pink Lake, Murtoa Stick Shed, the Little Desert, Halls Gap and the Grampians.

Location

Arkona Silo Art, 835 Dimboola-Rainbow Rd, Dimboola VIC 3414, Victoria ///keepers.headquarters.biometric (-36.361393710408706, 142.02189748099167)

This is another Silo Art painting by Smug (aka Simon Bates).