Do you like panoramas and virtual tours and would you like to know how to create them on your own? May be you have answered yes but maybe you also think it’s too difficult. It’s not! :) I will show you everything - I really like teaching other people how to make panoramas and you won’t have to spend hours and days searching for the information online. I specialise on beginners like you and if you have some experience already I am ready to take it to the next level! :)
- Jan Vrsinsky, founder and teacher at the How To Shoot 360º Academy
More about the Academy
The theme photo background of the Academy is my 360° view from Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland:
Panoramic photos first appeared at the beginning of 20th century. Probably the most famous and ones are the photos from the National archive.
“President Harding and the National Academy of Sciences at the White House, Washington, DC, April 1921” - can you find Einstain on the enlarged photo?
Today we’ve got affordable and accessible technology for taking stitching and publishing panoramic photos. Can you imagine, however, how incredibly difficult it must have been to create these photos before? There were no scanners, no digital cameras and no software to do the work for you. Everything was a matter of precise work in the field followed by long hours and days in the dark room. And that’s the reason I value these photos a lot. There’s so much embedded energy radiating out of them!
Barcelona in the year 1929
As if all this was not enough, various kites and blips started appearing in the beginning of 20th century and were used by photographers to carry their cameras to heights. One of the most well-known experts in the field was George Lawrence. He was a photography enthusiast and totally crazy - in a good way. The world needs more crazy people like him. He was breaking record after record during his time. First he started using gigantic tripods and ladders to get higher for his creative shots but it soon was not enough for him. He then started building baloons in which he flew and took his photos. He even faced a couple of serious accidents during which he actually crashed but fortunately survived. Later he started creating a set of kites tied to a rope which he called Airships. He invented his own stabilized platform which allowed him to stabilize his camera even in high winds. If you take into the consideration that today’s multicopters for lifting SLR cameras cost thousands of dollars you will perhaps realize how expensive and extremely difficult his endeavors must had been in his era. Really, hats off. Every time I look at the following picture Lawrence created I always hold my breath because I silently dream about all the things that needed to happen for it to be created:
One of the most magnificient and most famous panoramic phots George Lawrence ever created - San Francisco shortly after a devastating earthquake in 1906. This photo covers 160 degrees horizontally and was taken in the height of 600 meters (about 1800 feet).
I have published five panoramic photos from the photo walk last Saturday. The set is called Gates to Prague’s Fairy Tale Underworld.
Here’s two examples, you can find the rest on my blog:
And here’s our group - from the left: Václav, me, Jakub. Nobody else showed up so it was only the three of us. Probably the weather conditions that were far from perfect in the morning and thus many people decided to stay at home. We had fun anyway! :)
