MAKE A WALL MURAL

James Paterson shows you how to shoot and edit photos to create an eye-catching wall display

- James Paterson

2 HOURS

As anyone with a printer will tell you, it's nice to see your photos presented on paper. But gazing upon an entire wall of your own creation takes things to a whole new level.

Wall murals are becoming increasingly popular in offices, restaurants and homes, and thanks to healthy competition between print servies they're more affordable than ever. So why not create your own whopping wall display? Here we'll show you how it's done, from shooting the image to making the mural. And even if you don't fancy making a floor-to-ceiling photo, you'll find plenty of useful advice on creating ultra-detailed images.

Of course, deciding to turn an entire wall into a photo display is a big commitment, and something you might have to live with for years to come. There are lots of choices to be made: which wall? Which printer? And, most importantly, what kind of image? You can't just use any photo to create a wall-length print. Pixel count is the name of the game here - we need a vast amount of detail for a metres-long print, so we need to wring as much quality as possible out of our cameras.

There are several ways we can do this. Our choice of lens, aperture and camera gear will all have a bearing on sharpness and detail, and then there are techniques like panorama stitching and HDR imaging that can help maximise the resolution and quality of the image. But squeezing every last detail out of your camera's sensor can be a rewarding exercise, even more so when you get to see the results on a room-size scale.

HOW TO SHOOT SUPER-SHARP PANOS

Maximise your pixel count by shooting scenes in vertical segments

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