In April of 1997 I made my first QuickTime VR Panorama. Inspired by the beautiful work I found on my OpenDoc Developer Preview 4 CD (using a my Mac IIsi), I started capturing panoramas of familiar spaces and places I visited through 2005. This was also one of the first times I did commerical work, producing some QTVR content professionally.
My first panoramas were single row and captured on film. At the time Kodak PhotoCD (via Gamma Photo) was the cutting edge technology. There were also some competing (albeit lower quality) services that would put images on to 3.5" floppy disks, which I used a couple of times. Eventually my first digital camera and the Kaidan Kiwi+ panoramic tripod head made things easier. Later, to capture multi-row panoramas, I ended up building my own bracket to add a second degree of freedom DoF to the single row tripod head. I made my first panorama by hand-blending the images in Photoshop, but eventually used QuickTime VR Authoring Studio, and RealViz Stitcher to produce content.
QuickTime VR was effectively deprecated in Snow Leopard. Recently I ran across Pannellum, which I've used to update all of this old content and make these old panoramas available here. Please excuse the poor quality of some of these; they're decades old and include all of the original imperfections.
UIUC Arboretum Maple
This panorama was taken in early Autumn 2003 at the University of Illinois Arboretum. I really enjoy the perspective from under the large maple tree.
Arboretum North
This Cubic panorama was taken at the same time as the one above also in the UIUC Arboretum. This maple tree is located north of the above tree and the panorama is located further under the canopy of the tree.
Vail @ Eagle's Nest
This panorama was taken in early 2004 at Eagle's Nest on Vail Mountain. Precariously balanced over a railing, this panorama was likely in the harshest conditions I had ever captured.
Waterfall Glen
Captured in late 2003, this panorama is located under a footbridge in the Waterfall Glen forest preserve, near where I grew up.
Hinsdale South High School
This tour was captured in the hallways of Hinsdale South High School in 2003. To the best of my recollection, there was a National Honor Society lock-in, and I spent time capturing these eerily sparse cylindrical panoramas late in the evening.
Chicago River
Captured in early 1998, this panorama is located at the fork of the Chicago River. I created this panorama for a class project. This version has been restitched from the original source images in 2017 to provide a dramatically higher-resolution version than the original.Client Work:
