A pair of professional photographers spent the weekend at the Iowa State Fair working on a giant panoramic photo of fair patrons.
Tony Moline, of Dubuque, is helping with the project.
“What we’re doing is we’re walking around the fair, taking 200-plus photographs. We’ll stitch them all together into one 150-foot long photograph that will be on display at the fair next year,” Moline said.
While Moline was taking “backup” shots with a modern digital camera, Tim Olson was wheeling around a large, 90-year-old studio camera.
“I’m using an old camera from the 1920s and it’s not a panoramic camera, but we’re trying to replicate the look of a panorama that you might have seen from the 1920’s or teens,” Olson said.
A native of Marathon in northwest Iowa, Olson now lives in Dubuque. He and Moline created a 110-foot long, black and white panorama of people who attended DubuqueFest in 2013. This will be a similar photo, but 40-foot longer.
Olson explained the final product while gathering photos of people inside the Agriculture Building on the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
“It’s going to be a long group portrait, like a stream of people with the fair as a background. So, in here, you’ll have the butter cow as the background,” Olson said.
The 150-foot-long panorama will be on display at the 2017 Iowa State Fair’s Cultural Center. The project is being funded by a grant from the Iowa Arts Council.