360° Virtual Tours Gallery

I love being outside, in the fresh air (still a little too fresh in the spring mornings right now) and being there with a camera is amazing. Considering details and composing them into a photograph is a real challenge and one that produces amazing, but abstracted results. Sometimes I feel they lack the experience of actually being in a place. The all round view. The sounds. The ability to look where you want at something that was maybe outside the frame of a normal photograph. I think this is why I have flirted with long panoramic landscape photographs for years.

But last year when I started producing some video which led me into sound production did I think to do more with these panoramics. Virtual tours. A full 360°x180° view with sound and other embedded content. I've produced them in years past, but the technology was still Quicktime VR based and they were a little boring really. I can embed video and normal stills into them. I'm producing directional sound to add greater immersion (and seriously denting my wallet with high end audio gear).

And they are fun to make, both in terms of the shooting techniques and the post production. I'm producing tours in the city and the landscape alike. Pulling all the content together and then diving into the tour after it is all edited. It just takes me back to the place I was. I have been just letting them sit running in the browser like a screensaver too.

And the other thing that has happened recently is that they will now run on Apple iDevices like the iPhone and iPad without needing an app. They run right in the browser. Being able to move around in these virtual tours by touching them is just great. So tactile. Not all the functionality works on iDevices yet, sound, video, google maps and e-cards don't work, but all the same they are great fun.

Have a look at some recent tours, well just panos right now as they don't link up as a tour, in my Virtual Tours Gallery. Plenty more to come over the next few weeks too.

And if you click on the little camera icon on the menu you can create an e-card to send to a friend. 

Enjoy.