LeRoy Zimmerman

LeRoy Zimmerman (1940-2015), the northern most member of TWAN, was a panoramic photographer based out of Ester, Alaska, close to the Arctic circle. Panos are the only format he has used for 41 years. His panoramas are made up of three horizontal 35mm shots stitched together, creating a pano with a 1:4 image ratio. He began filming his panos in 1967 for use in his multi-image production, which he calls a PhotoSymphony, which is shown nightly to Alaska's visitors. In 1984 he devised a system to capture the auroras in his pano format. He discovered he was the first photographer to ever film the auroras in that format. His innovative theater program seen by thousands has been the only panoramic aurora presentation at the time.In 1998 he discovered the digital world of scanners, printers, and PhotoShop. It was a life changing moment when he realized that his three projected slides could now be stitched together into a single image. It took this photographer 31 years before he could hold his first print. Lived in Alaska, the auroras became his specialty and continued in the digital age. One of his aurora panos was used as the header image on a US Postage Stamp, released October 1, 2007, in celebration of the Polar Year. This was the first domestic aurora stamp ever issued by the USPS, a milestone of a lifetime for Zimmerman.Horizontal panoramas are probably the most comfortable images for our human eyes to gaze upon, as the shape of that format most approximates that of our natural field of vision. So it was only natural to film what it really was that our eyes were seeing. Not only the subject of our vision, but the natural boundaries of our own eyes as well.