Homeless in Vancouver: Chalk dinosaur—not quite life size

This child’s chalk drawing in a Mount Pleasant alley was quite large—about eight feet long. You can just see the tips of my shoes at the top of the photo.

It may appear like I was looking straight down on the alley from a height of at least six feet, but in fact I was standing right on the drawing.

To capture it straight on without foreshortening, I resorted to a panorama.

I walked over the drawing, holding the camera at a consistent height parallel to the ground and snapped over 70 slightly overlapping photographs—just like an airplane doing a photographic land survey. Then I used AutoStitch to composite the photographs.

I could’ve used the Hugin Panorama photo stitcher, which is much more powerful but it is also a huge pain to use.

AutoStitch either works or it doesn’t.