Smiles All Around : Unusual Camera Takes 360-Degree Group Shot of 500 Students, Staff at Cypress College

While Kornelius Schorle was setting up his Cyclo Pan 70 camera, said to be one of only 10 worldwide, the surrounding circle of about 500 Cypress College students, faculty and staff whiled away the 20-minute wait by doing the wave, cracking jokes and enjoying the Wednesday morning sun.

Some knelt on the damp grass, while others stood outside the circle, unsure whether to join in.

“Hey, get in the picture!” security guard Dan Nava urged a reluctant bystander.

Greg Carnes, a student in auto mechanics, beckoned to two students sitting a safe distance away, but a nearby classmate wisecracked: “Naw, (the photographer) set the ugly people aside.”

A couple of male drama students wore yellow dresses for the occasion, claiming “we always dress this way. We’re theater students.”

Finally, Jerry Burchfield, the college’s photography instructor who arranged for the group portrait, admonished the crowd to stop the wave, and Schorle’s camera spun slowly around on its tripod, capturing the images of the assembled students and staff. A few people hammed, and some hands still went up in the air.

“One more time, and no waving this time!” Burchfield bellowed through a bullhorn.

After a few spins, the photo shoots were declared over, the crowd applauded, and everybody wandered away.

Said a gleeful Schorle: “We have it frozen in time.”

Burchfield, who arranged for Schorle to take the 360-degree picture, hopes that the 16-inch-high by 50-foot-long print will capture a rare moment at Cypress College when people actually got together for something.

“A community college is made up of a community of people,” he remarked. “We often lose sight of that.”

The print, which will probably be delivered to the campus next week, will likely be displayed in the Theater Arts building, which also served as a backdrop for part of the picture. “We need a site with public access and a big wall,” Burchfield said. “The only spot that seems appropriate is the lobby of the Theater Arts building.”

Schorle, who specializes in panoramic photography and is the owner of the Long Skinny Picture Co. in Irvine, is donating the picture to Cypress College, which plans to sell smaller versions and T-shirts commemorating the event in the campus bookstore. Profits raised through the sales will be used to fund events that promote diversity at Cypress, said Burchfield, who has known Schorle for years.

Schorle has already done panoramic pictures for various Saddleback Valley Unified elementary schools, and Burchfield wanted one for Cypress College, a quiet community college of about 15,000 students.

“This is a public activity to get people together and . . . give more life to the campus,” the five-year Cypress College faculty member said.

Major group activities are not, apparently, something the campus is used to.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a group picture,” said Nava, as he edged in on the circle before the shoot began. The college is strict about class attendance, he said, “so many are still in class.”

Burchfield, who had chosen Wednesday morning because more students were likely to be on campus, said he would have liked to have had a bigger turnout.

“But if there were too many more, we’d have had trouble getting them all in the picture,” he acknowledged.

John Reed, a Schorle assistant who helped him with the Cypress College picture, said they have taken panoramic pictures of as many as 850 people with the Cyclo Pan 70, which they said is one of only 10 in the world. Schorle has specialized in 360-degree photography for 20 years, selling to gift shops, overseas clients, and even doing prints of national parks, for the Port of Long Beach, and of airport sites for the Federal Aviation Administration.

“There’s no way you can come back from a photo adventure with a conventional shot, a squatty picture, and say, ‘This is what I saw,’ ” he said, noting that people prefer an “extended version--what I saw with both eyes.”