Holy Monastery of Taxiarches Mantamadou
Project description
Website design and 360o VR Tour
Pelagus Creative Web, member of Aegean Communication, proudly presents the 360 ° virtual tour of the «Holy Monastery of Taxiarches Mantamadou». Its implementation required more than 15,000 photo frames for 28 Gigapixel resolution, while the project had a total size of just over 1 Terabyte.
Virtual tours are the most realistic way to view a space through a screen and are created with spherical 360x180 degree panoramic photography in very large numbers, which are combined with each other with special software. Visitors can tour the interior and surroundings of the temple and interact with points of interest for additional information.
Admire the embossed image of Taxiarches in unparalleled quality, explore the temple sanctuary and discover the Holy Relics of the monks, watch in detail the hagiographies and the sacred relics. All that in an atmospheric environment composed by the image and the chants of Michael Anthimos Dissos.
Our approach
The uniqueness and size of the pilgrimage, as well as our willingness to come up with a special result led us to set high and quality standards.
The project had high photographic requirements, especially in interiors that where difficult lighting conditions. So we used high resolution DSLR cameras, and applied HDR and focus stacking techniques. There were points where it took over 2000 photo frames to get the perfect result. Places like the center of the temple were planned to be photographed at a specific date and time of day so that we have the best lighting conditions and specifically the sunlight coming in through the windows making these characteristic rays. The special colors of the temple and the icons led us to apply a detailed procedure to find the right white balance to achieve the best possible color rendering.
A serious issue was the reflections in the windows in front of the images. Some were temporarily removed, while in others we used a black cloth behind the camera.
Worth mentioning is that in the virtual tour there are the original texts with the history of the monastery, which are narrated by Father Efstratios Dissos who was recorded in a studio for this purpose.
Towards the end of the work we decided to make an aerial panorama with which the virtual tour would begin, so that the visitor can see the place from above and can easily go to remote places such as the chapel of Agiasma.
Finally, the need was expressed to have a precursor website, in which, among other things, the news will be posted and the miracles of Taxiarches .
