Rollout Photography

Rollout photography is a category under peripheral photography where the process is used to make a three dimensional object look like a two dimensional photographic image. Rollout photography is used to project an image of a cylindrical object. The object photographed looks planer than it is in its original form. The artworks inscribed on the surface of a cylindrical object gets emphasized in rollout photography.

The technique used in rollout photography is that the camera which is specially equipped with the mechanism of vertical slit aperture is placed opposite to a rotating table or a plate with the object put in the center. The object is rotated on the moving plate and the camera film is exposed in small intervals depending on the aperture dimension. As per the mechanism of a camera where the image of the film is projected on a backward and upside down pattern, the table is set to spin in the opposite direction to that of direction in which the film advances.

The credit of inventing the rollout photography goes to Justin Kerr, who developed the mechanism while working with Michael D. Coe to produce a photography book on ceramic vessels. Kerr created a new camera in the year between 1972 to 1978, which established the art of rollout photography.