360º views of city never seen before
A PHOTOGRAPHER has produced images of Cardiff that show the city from an angle you’ve never seen before.
Damian Chidgey, 53, started using a 360-degree camera on his daily walks in lockdown to create these incredible images. He says that his “Tiny Planet” pictures give you a way of seeing familiar Cardiff landmarks in a unique new way.
He said: “I saw a few examples and was bored in lockdown. I noticed it was a really unusual way of photographing landscape and making things that you’ve seen loads of times before look really different and make them jump out.”
Damian, who has lived in Llandaff
for most of his life, completed a photography degree in Swansea about 20 years ago and has been a photographer ever since.
To create these images, he uses a 360-degree camera which has two fisheye lenses. The images are then stitched into a globe shape using software.
“I’ve been into photography since I was a teenager,” he said. “This 360 camera has really restarted my interest in photography because its so unusual, striking and different.”
The resulting 2022 Tiny Planet calendar features images taken around South Wales including the Pierhead Building, Castell Coch, Victoria Park, the Cardiff Bay Barrage, Pontcanna, St Fagans Castle, Llwyn-on Reservoir, Kenfig Nature Reserve and the Cathedral Green in Llandaff. Not all of his images are featured in the calendar.
“I was taking photographs and posting them on Instagram and I kept getting lots of very positive comments, and then one day I thought, ‘I’ve got enough pictures here for a calendar’, so I decided to have one printed,” he said.
“I had enough people interested – friends and family, and people on
Instagram and Facebook – to make a calendar and see what happens.”
Damian says that Cardiff makes a “fantastic” subject for his work.
“You’ve got so many amazing buildings and so many beautiful parks that are in walking distance. When I started in lockdown, you couldn’t go very far but fortunately, from where I am, within an hour’s walk there are numerous things I could photograph that were really striking and amazing,” he said.
Damian has now put together his calendar of the images for 2022, which is available to buy online along with individual prints on Damian’s website or from Halls on Llandaff High Street.