Ever since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics I’ve been enthralled with the freedom of 360 degree and wide aspect panoramic pictures. Apple had recently released QuickTime VR and used it to create 360 degree photos of the Atlanta Olympics. Viewing the photos across my dial-up modem was a chore but the reward of exploring the environment and choosing where to look made the task worth the effort. Instead of being captivate to the photographer’s intended target I was free to look in the other direction for a complete sense of the location. Apple was the first, as I recall, to pioneer this type of technology and make it available to the general public
Unfortunately I didn’t have a Mac and couldn’t generate content on my own. Later years I dabbled with PTgui and some other stitching software that came with a camera. The results were impressive but I wasn’t ready to invest in a high quality camera and the software to generate the images. The Panorama Tools project was interesting but between 2000 and 2002 the tools were too complex to bother using.
Over the past year my interest in panoramic pictures was refreshed by projects like GigaPan and Spherical Panoramas. It was possible for me to tinker with multi-picture stitched panoramic pictures from my point-and-shoot camera because Windows Vista and Windows 7 included a free panorama stitcher in Windows Live Photo Gallery. While on vacation I free handed 20 picture panorama from a beach in Costa Rica with my brother’s digital SLR camera. The results were amazing and I knew it was worth upgrading and buying the proper software.
The “Projects -> Photography” category is an ongoing blog of my adventures with stitched panoramic and 360 degree pictures.