The Big Picture - West Midlands

The Big Picture takes shape as the shortlisted images for the record-breaking mosaic are revealed

With just over a week to go, and over 110,000 pictures received from across the West Midlands, we can reveal the eight photos in the running to form the final image of the world’s largest photo mosaic.

All 110,000 images sent in from the public will be used to create a huge, record-breaking photo mosaic, the size of three tennis courts, to be unveiled outside Birmingham’s Millennium Point on Saturday 23 August. The mosaic will create the image of one of the final eight shortlisted photos, but the special picture will be kept under tight wraps until the grand unveiling.

See, and discuss, all eight shortlisted images.

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World Record Blog: Helen Marshall, Lead Artist

Helen Marshall tells us how the construction of the mosaic is going:

The photos are being assembled one by one onto the two hundred and eighty eight plywood boards by the volunteers and the tension in the hall at Thinktank is heating up.

It was great to meet some of the people who are giving their time to the project and helping with the mass assembly, many of whom have submitted a lot of photos and who keep coming across them in the montage.

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Big Picture Picks - Richard Rendshaw

You may have seen Richard Redshaw on TV at some point, as he was one of a few Big Picture photo submitters to be interviewed on BBC Midlands Today. He sent around a thousand photos in, and has been closely following the project, looking at as many of the photos as possible.

Richard has picked eight of his favourites for everyone to see.

If you’d like to put together your own galley of “picks” on a theme, or just your favourites, email us at editor@inthebigpicture.co.uk and well put it together with you.  

Making the mosaic at Dudley Zoo

The Big Picture team were at Dudley Zoo with hundreds of photos and a panel of the mosaic on Wednesday, so visitors could contribute to breaking that World Record.

The Zoo’s section of the mosaic was completed in record time with help from John’s Lane Residents Group from Tipton Road Methodist Church, who were visiting as a treat.

There are still many panels to go, over a hundred still need their photos added, so if you’ve time to help and would like to be part of The Big Picture please come to one of the workshops. You can find full details here.

Is your photo fit for a museum? They all are with this fun site

Dumpr.net (not a great name, I know) has a lot of cool tools for changing your photos into something special.

This photo was made with what they call “museumr” where you can see how one of your pictures would look hung in different museums and art galleries.

If your photos are on flickr then you can use then with a click, but you can upload any photos you have on your computer to try.

Focus on Stephen O’Loughlin

Stephen O’Loughlin’s shortlisted photo of people seen though a camera phone was an example of using depth of field as part of the picture.

Stephen has been experimenting further with the technique, here he’s taken a photo of himself holding his shortlisted image and then done the same with that print, adjusting the depth of field.

It’s a nice effect. You can try out depth of field effects if your camera allows you to control focus and aperture (SLRs will, but you can check your manual). There’s a great explanation and tutorial here.