June 3, 2008 by pmelcher.

A while back, I had written about photosynth, when it just came out. Created by Microsoft, the idea is to stitch together multiple images taken by complete strangers to create a panoramic view taken from multiple vantage point. Well, Google just issued their version thought the Spanish company Panoramio. Panoramio is the company that allows you to post your images on Google Earth.

With its content, Panoramio has created its on stitches to render a full anonymous picture of a place. Using hundred of images taken by various people at different time, one can visualized a place or a monument thought a series a similar images. One image leads to another one and so on. Maybe the idea is to put together photographs of the whole world so that one could literally see every place. Google certainly has the means and the ambition. It would be a sort of social map constituted of all the images of the earth as seen by everyone.

You can see an example here

This technology, along with others of the kind, shows how terribly unique the internet is when it deals with photographs . The possibilities to create and expand are almost endless, while giving the user a richer experience.

This would be hard to be used in sport, however, but just think if you could stitch together thousands of images of the winning moment at the 100 meter final at the Olympics. A thousand views for one moment.

This technology could also be applied to commercial stock, making the  image more 3D and interactive.  Or in news, breaking the usual slide show linear model of one image after the other but all in one. Think of the New York Times readers gallery of photographs on the crane incident. This, to me, illustrate the “Future of Contemporary Photography” much more than any images of eggs, empty parking lots or thousand of sunsets ripped from their online presence to be pasted on a lonely, endless wall.

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June 3, 2008 by pmelcher.

This is cool. really. Although it uses an example for paparazzi, it could be used for news, sports and even commercial stock. It will probably become the new “have you got it?” gadget of the photo industry.

Here is how it works. Mounted on a quad copter, a remote controlled helicopter with 4 blades for stability, a camera, a video feed and GPS unit are combined  to survey and photograph any place from 20 feet above the ground ( or lower). The operator can see through the video feed to aim and shoot stills that can be either transmitted or saved into an on board card. The unit is very silent and extremely stable.

It is still in a prototype stage and probably cannot yet be used over crowds of people. ( might fall and hurt someone). But just imagine the possibilities. If undetected, it can photograph a celebrity wedding for 1/10 of the price it would cost to rent a very noisy and visible helicopter. For nature or commercial stock photographers, it can allow to photograph hard or impossible to reach places. Just imagine : you could photograph a model on a cliff by hovering beyond the edge.

The boundaries of uses of this gadget are only in the  owners imagination . Click on the image to see  a video :

the photo copter

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