Everything big is Dubai. They boast the world’s tallest building, the world’s largest shopping mall, and now the world’s largest photograph. Gerald Donovan recently created the 45-gigapixel panorama of the Dubai skyline as a technical test to explore the limits of hardware and software. At the end of last year, the largest photo in the world was a 26 gigapixel shot of Dresden, Germany.

Robotic panorama devices are making the creation of gigantic photographs easier and easier. Donovan used a Gigapan EPIC Pro to create his image, along with a Canon 7D and 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L at 400mm. After 3.5 hours of shooting, he had 4,250 JPG images that took up 27.5 GB of his 32GB memory card. If the photograph were to be printed, it would result in a print the size of nearly 1,200 billboards.

Check out the photograph over at Gigapan.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video showing how the photograph was made:

You can also check out the previous largest photographs in Wikipedia’s article on the subject.

Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist who drew Mohammed as a dog, was recently told that a scheduled lecture on free speech, to be held at Jönköping Högskolan, would be canceled due to "security concerns." This, of course, is a common evasion, intended to protect the brittle sensibilities of Muslim students while supposedly standing four square behind the right of free speech.

Alas, the administrators in Jönköping had a point. During a lecture in Uppsala today Vilks was attacked by a pack of feral fundamentalists, one of whom managed to headbutt the artist and break his glasses. Police intervened and waged a short battle with the religious nutters who can be heard in the video below, captured by the newspaper UNT, shouting Allahu Akbar! The AP has a quick report, explaining that "Uppsala University spokeswoman Pernilla Bjork said Vilks was showing a provocative film with sexual content to the crowd when the attacker ran up and hit him in the face with his fists."