TIME — One World Trade Center Panorama
The problem
TIME wanted a cover from the top of a building that had only just topped out, at a resolution a fold-out print could carry.
The approach
Shoot from the 408-foot spire itself and stitch, rather than compositing from lower vantage points.
What was built
567 frames over roughly five hours, shot from a custom 13-foot aluminium jib built over eight months for this single job. Gavin stitched the panorama.
The outcome
TIME's fold-out cover, 17 March 2014. In June 2016 Mark Zuckerberg used the image to launch Facebook's 360 Photos — the format's introduction to a billion users.
On 28 September 2013, a team climbed to the 408-foot spire of the newly topped-out One World Trade Center and shot 567 frames over roughly five hours, using a custom 13-foot aluminum jib built over eight months specifically for the job. Gavin stitched those frames into the panorama that ran as TIME’s fold-out cover on 17 March 2014.
The image outlived the magazine issue. On 9 June 2016, Mark Zuckerberg used it to launch Facebook’s 360 Photos feature — the panorama that introduced the format to a billion-plus users started as a jib rig on top of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
THEME (the.me), covering the shoot on 9 March 2014, named the team directly: photographers Jonathan D. Woods (TIME) and Michael Franz (GigaPan), and stitcher Gavin D. Farrell — independent, third-party credit, by name, for the specific work that made the image possible.
Role, precisely: the stitch, not the shoot. It’s a narrower claim than “one of the creators,” and a stronger one — it’s exactly what the record supports, and it’s the kind of technical, specific credit that holds up to scrutiny.
The printed magazine spread carries the credit line verbatim: “Photograph by Jonathan D. Woods and Michael Franz for TIME; stitching by Gavin D. Farrell; compositing by Meghan P. Farrell.” That is TIME’s own masthead — the credit in print, not a third party describing it.
NBC’s Today show covered the shoot on site, with live footage of the rig against the spire.
Stitched TIME's One World Trade Center cover panorama.
