Canniverse — Silk Road Visual + Kenya Tourism Board

Documentary photography consultant on Canniverse — Silk Road Visual Technology’s flagship immersive-cinema project, formally co-created with the Kenya Tourism Board.

Canniverse (Chinese: 罐头地球 / “Canned Earth”, under the vision statement “Nature Contained, World Shared”) is Silk Road Visual’s continuously-updated ultra-HD library of natural-history “highlight moments” filmed to fulldome and irregular-giant-screen specifications. The capture-equipment and production specifications are explicitly benchmarked against the internal Las Vegas MSG Sphere dome-screen source standard — meaning every shoot has to deliver imagery that holds at MSG Sphere display resolution and dynamic-range.

The role

Silk Road Visual brought me in from 2024 as the documentary photography consultant on the East African production block — closely-coordinated seasonal-rhythm shoots covering the Great Migration corridor and the wider East African grassland ecology that the project will distribute through planetaria, science museums, and immersive cinemas in China and internationally.

The framing in the company’s own announcement:

“To achieve international-class production standards, the team has been building its live-capture unit since 2024 and has completed multiple rounds of equipment testing — and invited documentary photography consultant and BBC collaborating photographer Barny Trevelyan-Johnson to participate in the creation.”

Production context

Silk Road Visual is a publicly-listed Chinese visual-technology company headquartered in Shenzhen, specialising in CG, VR, AR, and digital-creative production for major exhibitions and immersive venues. Canniverse is the company’s natural-history flagship and its first formal Kenya Tourism Board joint-creation agreement.

The fulldome / MSG-Sphere-spec capture tier is rare among East African production engagements; most natural-history broadcast tops out at 4K-broadcast standards. Canniverse operates a tier above that, with the storage, processing and master-management pipeline to match.

Press