Immersive Experience · London
Arup 80th / Lightroom London
Preparing high-resolution aerial city imagery for an immersive experience exploring the future of the world's cities.
The project
Aerial photography moved beyond the frame and into the room.
For Arup's 80th anniversary, Emota created an immersive event at Lightroom London around a forward-looking question: how can we design better futures for the cities in which we live?
Lensaloft was invited to contribute a selection of large-format aerial city panoramas and still photography to the visual production. The project began after the creative team discovered the work through a London Evening Standard feature and approached us to explore how the imagery might translate from conventional photography into an immersive environment.
It became an unusually collaborative post-production exercise. Existing photographs and 360° panoramas, originally made high above cities around the world, needed to be reconsidered for a room where imagery would extend across four walls and beneath the audience.
- Project
- Arup 80th Anniversary
- Venue
- Lightroom · King's Cross, London
- Client
- Arup
- Production
- Emota
- Contribution
- Aerial city panoramas · helicopter stills · 360° imagery · large-format post-production
- Environment
- Four walls + floor · 28 projectors · 1,500 m² immersive canvas
Built for immersion
A very different way to look at a city.
Lightroom is four storeys high, with 28 projectors creating a 1,500 m² image across all four walls and the floor. Emota's production was designed specifically for that environment, using the room itself as part of the storytelling rather than treating it as an oversized cinema screen.
For aerial photography, that shift in scale was particularly interesting. A city panorama already contains a large amount of information — streets, infrastructure, architecture, light and human activity. At Lightroom, those details could surround the audience rather than sit inside a single frame.
The goal from our side was simply to give the creative team files that would hold together at that scale and remain useful as they shaped the wider film and event experience.
Image preparation
Returning to the RAW files for a 24K-scale environment.
Files that work beautifully as conventional photographs are not automatically ready to be projected around a room. A number of selected images were rebuilt from the original capture files, with detail, scaling and stitching reconsidered for the venue and production requirements.
From capture to projection
Archived photos, new possibilities.
The selected material had been photographed at different times, on different camera systems and for very different original purposes. Some were full 360° aerial panoramas; others were dedicated still photographs.
For the Lightroom production, a number of files were revisited using Capture One, DxO, PTGui, Photoshop and After Effects. Some needed relatively straightforward refinement. Others required more experimentation with blending, scaling and detail before they were ready for testing in the venue.
That process was a useful reminder that the value of a strong source image can extend well beyond the format for which it was first created. Photography made from an open helicopter years earlier could find a completely new life when placed into a carefully designed immersive environment.
Collaboration
One contribution within a much larger experience.
Emota's wider production brought together immersive film, animation, motion graphics, spatial audio, live speakers and performance for Arup's anniversary event. Lensaloft's role was focused: supplying and preparing aerial city imagery that could support that visual world at the resolution and scale the venue demanded.
Emota case study film
When film becomes an immersive experience.
Emota’s case study film provides a closer look at the Lightroom environment and the immersive visual production created for Arup’s 80th anniversary.
Emota event case study
Turning a milestone anniversary into an immersive call for change.
Emota’s wider event case study looks at how Arup’s 80th anniversary was developed as a future-focused experience, bringing together immersive content, speakers and the Lightroom environment around the question of how we design better futures for our cities.
Related capabilities
Aerial imagery designed to work beyond a conventional screen.
Immersive & large-format projects
Planning imagery for a space that goes beyond a conventional screen?
Lensaloft can help prepare existing aerial archives or create new high-resolution aerial photography, panoramas and film for immersive, experiential and large-format environments.