“Great Wall West”, a life-size image of a vertical coral reef in the British West Indies. This image was the first “gigapixel” image ever produced, and in the year 2000, this was the largest digital image ever produced of a coral reef and the first “stitched” image we know of, well before the term existed. The seamless mosaic image was manually assembled together from high resolution drum scans of over 300 images photographed on professional transparency film at a distance of less than four feet from the reef. The 1770 MegaPixel image produced for these projects are available for licensing for use in architectural or custom art projects. Explore the image at high resolution online at the link below.

In 2005, jim Hellemn was commissioned to create an extreme resolution image for the Camana Bay Observation Tower, a public attraction in Grand Cayman where visitors can “walk” up a typical Cayman coral reef. A composite image of a Cayman coral reef wall was created from high resolution photographic images to match the architecture of the new construction. Following completion of the high resolution underwater image, the image was rendered in over 3 million hand-cut Italian glass tiles installed on the inside wall of the 5 story tower.

Sponsors: Intel, Little Cayman Beach Resort, SeaBotix, Ocean Technology Systems, Ikelite, Marine Camera Systems, Underwater Kinetics, Compass Light Productions and World Ocean Observatory.

Sponsors: Diving Unlimited international and Ikelite.