...it would look like this.
Every Saturday spent in Williams-Brice stadium is a memorable one, but DYK there’s this really cool way to forever remember those knock-down-drag-out-wins with the ‘Cocks?
Blakeway Gigapixel does interactive, 360º group panoramas for sporting events – including one Gamecock Football game each year – where you can virtually fly around the stadium and zoom in on + socially “tag” the faces of 80,250 fans. This selfie is massive. I’m talking 25+ gigapixels – that’s like surrounding yourself with 13,000+ 1080p HDTVs, showing only one picture.
This year they photographed the Arkansas game at home in Willy-B on Oct. 7. See if you can find yourself.
Image via Blakeway Gigapixel
Who is Blakeway? A company that’s been publishing panoramas for 25+ years (since 1989). They have contracts with the NFL, NHL, NASCAR and ~100 colleges + universities.
How’d they get connected with the Gamecocks?
“Because USC is has one of the best athletics programs in the country, they were an easy first choice for us to try to work with,” said Andrew Mullet of Blakeway Gigapixel. Blakeway has been working with Gamecock Athletics since 2008 to capture images for their Baseball and Football programs, plus an aerial image of the entire campus.
How is this process even possible? Here’s how Blakeway does it. ⬇️
1️⃣ Develop | Before the event they plan every detail (like what to photograph + how the website should look) with their client (in this case, UofSC).
2️⃣ Shoot | A photographer shoots a series of high resolution pictures (all under 2 minutes) during a break in the game.
3️⃣ Upload | The photographer then remotely sends the pictures to the company’s office in Minnesota for the team to get to work on them.
4️⃣ Produce | The production team begins putting the photos together using super powerful custom computers.
5️⃣ Process | The image is then processed to be viewed online, on servers made to handle massive traffic levels.
6️⃣ Promote | The image is uploaded so the client can share it with all its fans. It typically takes 24-48 hours after the event before the gigapixel is uploaded. Then, fans can tag, share and order prints (hello, best dad-Christmas-gift ever).
We played around with it for a while and zoomed in to find Sam at the game – doing what we do best; taking pics for the gram + repping that COLAtoday media badge. 👀
Image via Blakeway Gigapixel
Go Gamecocks,
