rnaud Frich is a Parisian photographer, living in Clermont-Ferrand (Auvergne, France), specialized in virtual tours and panoramic photography. Since 2000, thanks to Internet, his activity took off, and now he practises all around France. He also trains professionals in his two specialities. “I became keen of panoramic photography since i was fourteen. I always felt at my ease with this format. Later, the question arose: how to earn my living?. I initially became a teacher, then a dealer, and sold lots of things. In 2000, I discovered Internet and its extraordinary potentialities. I understood I was going at least to be able to live of my photographs. Very quickly, an editor contacted me to carry out a book about panoramic photography. Today, I sell pictures everywhere. Yesterday, there was an English, the other day, an American. I sell numbered edition – panoramic posters – of Paris, and some of Auvergne too, all around the world ”.
Arnaud Frich acquired a solid reputation, and carries out photographs to order too, like that of the Ministry of Defense: “I photographed the office of the minister in high-definition, on request of Monuments historiques, which wished to have a very precise document before the restoration works of this office. On the final document, one can see details smaller than one millimetre”. It is the result of an assembly of 1.300 photographs, taken at a rate of 350 for each of the four walls. A Herculean task? No, if you control powerful computer equipement, and a suitable software. “I’ve taken the pictures in one and half our, with two cameras simultaneously, their rotation being managed by computer. Then, to assemble it all, it takes two workdays and a lot of RAM memory”.
Arnaud Frich also signed all the virtual tours for the Louvres museum. De luxe hotels call upon him, as well as large companies like Eurocopter, or EDF (Energie de France) for photographs showing public and private lighting in Paris area. “In France we are two people working in very high-definition, about a hundred in the world. It is a true know-how. About virtual tours, ten professionals in France work very well, and the others just try. Everybody can easily assemble ten photographs, but it is another story when they are two or three hundred”.
Frich has recently terminated, in collaboration with Kolor, the company world-leader in automatic image detection and stitching, an incredible photograph: a true mosaic of more than two thousand pictures of Paris landscape, amounting the size of 26 gigabites: point of view of this panoramic photograph is a tower of Saint-Sulpice church, and integrates tour Eiffel, Notre-Dame, Sacré-Cœur and all the skyline of Paris. ”You will be able to zoom in indefinitely. It will be the showcase of my know-how…“.
www.arnaudfrichphoto.com
www.paris-26-gigapixels.com
Autopano, the software developed by Kolor specifically to assemble panoramic photographs and virtual tours, can now be seen in action also in Harlem, Warsaw and Budapest.
www.harlem-13-gigapixels.com
www.warszawa360.pl
www.70-billion-pixels-budapest.com
