Is This The Greatest Image on Earth?

A 2.5 Gigapixel 360 degree Panorma gives “Cruise-eye view” from the pinnacle of the world’s tallest building.

It is arguably the greatest image on earth – a 360 degree panoramic view from the very top of the tallest building on earth, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.  The giddying image shows the view across the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates from 828 metres above sea level captured in high resolution using some of the most advanced techniques in digital photography. It’s the view actor Tom Cruise made famous as he sat at the tower’s peak during the filming of Mission Impossible Four, ‘Ghost Protocol’.

The image has been released to celebrate the second  Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Photography Award (HIPA), which will take place in Dubai in March. The award, the world’s richest photography award, will see prizes totalling $389,000 and attracts entrants from 99 countries. The grand prize awarded by HIPA is $120,000.

“This is an extraordinary image taken from an extraordinary location. It reflects the goals of HIPA, to extend the boundaries of photography and celebrate images of unusual beauty and quality that are truly outstanding,” said His Excellency Ali bin Thalith, the General Secretary of the award. The panorama takes in Dubai’s many landmarks, including the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel, the world’s biggest mall, the Dubai Mall and the Meydan Racecourse and shows the remarkable growth of a city still on a fast track to developing as a business hub and tourist destination.

The image is composed from over 70 individual photos. Dubai based photographer Gerald Donovan created the shot using a mechanised panoramic tripod head to take a series of 48 panoramic images, each shot at a resolution of 80 megapixels. These were then stitched together with manually shot images to ‘fill-in’ gaps caused by equipment installed at the top of the tower such as the lightning conductor and aircraft beacons.  The result is an image that can be zoomed, tilted and rotated, giving viewers a sense of how it must feel  to sit atop the world’s highest building.

The top of the Burj Khalifa, developed by global property developer Emaar Properties, is over 200 metres above the highest point reached by the building’s elevators, which reach the 160th floor at speeds of some 10 metres per second. The tower’s celebrated public observation deck, At the top, Burj Khalifa is on the 124th floor.  The journey to the pinnacle involves a steep ladder climb within the 200-meter spire that crowns the building.

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